


Pulmentum Formidabilis

by septimalShenanigans



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Anxiety, Bad Decisions, Bloodplay, Emotional Manipulation, Ethical Dilemmas, Existential Angst, F/M, Hannibal is a Cannibal, Major Original Character(s), Manipulative Hannibal, Original Character-centric, Panfandom cosmological myth-arc, Philosophical Issues, Semi-Public Sex, Slow Build, Suicidal Thoughts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-17
Updated: 2015-09-02
Packaged: 2018-04-15 04:42:05
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 16
Words: 54,469
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4593225
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/septimalShenanigans/pseuds/septimalShenanigans
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Disarmed and stranded in a world without magic, a realm-traveller finds herself trapped by a predator more cunning than she can imagine—or is she drawn to a man more charming than she anticipated? With Hannibal Lecter, there is never only one truth.</p><p>And soon the question becomes not how Yumi can survive this…but whether she will want to.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prologue

Working outdoors, he should have given the weather more consideration. Thunder was unnecessary drama, but rain, if it arrived too soon, would be more than a nuisance. He could smell the cold front coming in from the west.

He had taken the usual precautions, covered in plastic, rubber gloves. Nonetheless, he began to feel the prickle of electricity on his skin.

Carelessness inviting the caprice of nature, or sin inviting the wrath of God? Daring the latter to prove Himself, Lecter did not move.

No lightning came. But now he could smell the ozone. Was it one of those atmospheric tricks, like ball lightning, St. Elmo’s fire? He could see no luminescence yet.

That would be an interesting phenomenon to witness, but he had to hurry and clean up if the storm was so close. Such were the risks in indulging the urge to audienceless theatrics…

No. Not audienceless after all. He turned.


	2. Doctor's Orders

Transport between realms generally favored height, as if the borders were thinner up in the air. So Yumi ended up atop another building. Night, lit by another city, manmade orange glow on the low clouds.

But she knew what magic felt like; there was none in this world. How could the one she was looking for be here?

“This isn’t it,” she murmured. “The Master must have made a mistake. I’ll have to get back.”

Even the voices of the watchers were faint, as if torn away in the wind. “…long time before the key… wait… see us here? …cold…”

“Yeah, this place feels off. I’ll just have to lie low until the key works again…”

In the wrong realm with not an ally to her name, she couldn’t say exactly what lying low would entail, but she had a gun and her wits.

First things first—she would have to get off this roof. It looked to be some fifteen stories up and there was clearly a storm coming in. A rusting water tower groaned overhead in the temperature change.

She edged around corners looking for some mode of ingress. Cold wind hid the sound of her footsteps. Someone was there.

The wind brought a tang of hot metal. No, blood.

Not as if she had never seen blood before, but seeing a person getting carved up was new. She had studiously avoided the lab, of course, and coronership wasn’t her thing either. But she was pretty fucking sure that neither experiments nor autopsies took place outside on top of a building.

The door was there. She wouldn’t make it without the carver noticing.

It would probably be best to hide on the other edge and wait for him to be gone, storm or no. But in the moment of her hesitation he sensed her presence and turned.

He stood, facing her, latex gloves red with gore. Just a man, a tall white man, with the focus of a scientist, but the movement of something else—a tiger, a shark.

Yumi drew her pistol. “Sorry for the interruption, but I don’t care what’s going on here. I didn’t see anything. I’m going to get out of here and not say anything about what I didn’t see. Are we clear?”

“How long were you here?” he asked. His voice clipped the vowels short, a strange accent to her ears.

“I’m not asking you about your business.” She kept the gun trained on him and moved toward the door. There was a cooler by the body. One could hazard that his business was organ harvesting, but that was more than she cared to guess.

With a few swift steps the man was blocking the door. “You can see it, more or less. I really can’t allow you to leave.”

 _Shit. Shit shit shit. Wait a minute, I’m the one with the gun._ “I am leaving. Would you get out of the way?”

“You don’t want to shoot me,” he said. “That will cause a good deal of trouble for you.”

“You’re causing me some trouble at the moment.” Any more and she’d at least give him a bullet in the shoulder. She gestured with her head. “Move, please. Now.”

He took a step toward her, and another. She fired twice, but missed—he was too fast somehow, and she twisted and fired again, so surprised that she made the unbelievably dumb not-even-rookie mistake of failing to brace for the recoil. When she tried to adjust her footing she slipped in blood, letting out a short cry, and fell back, and back, off the edge.

A strong hand caught her ankle and everything went white with pain.

 

-

 

She didn’t quite ever lose consciousness, but she found it very difficult to move, or decide what to do, or care what was happening.

Someone set her down just inside of the door and asked her questions. “What’s your name?”

“Yumi.”

“All of it?”

“Yumi Starseeker.”

“How did you get up here?”

“I came from… You…won’t believe.”

“Tell me.”

“From another world. Trans…ported from a different universe. See? My head hurts.”

He leaned in very close for a moment, which should mean something, but she couldn’t register it.

“You have a concussion. Don’t try to move.”

“It’s the truth. Not a…bump on the head.”

“I know.” He gently put a hand to her sternum, pressing her back down as she tried to sit up. “But you did bump your head. I’m going to shine a light in your eyes—please allow me to hold them open.”

Fingers on her face, burning white LED. She groaned.

“You’ll be all right,” he said. “But don’t move. The stairs are very steep. I will come back for you.”

And then the man went back outside, so she was stuck there in the dark, head spinning like the sort of hangover she hadn’t given herself in years, at the top of the stairwell of a strange building in a strange world. She could hear thunder and rain. After some process he headed down past her with the cooler.

Creepy. That was it. Someone leaning in to smell you while you were incapacitated was definitely creepy.

 

-

 

Someone was telling her to wake up.

Yumi came to on a sofa. The room was rather opulently decorated, with the sort of touches that brought to mind the phrase “old world,” though she had no idea yet what old or new in this world might entail.

Or whose room it was…

She tried to sit up and everything hurt. “Ow. Ow.”

“Don’t move too fast, Yumi. You have a concussion. Do you remember?”

It was that man. He was strange-looking, black birdlike eyes and sharp bones and too-flat hair, but a fine starched shirt and a waistcoat. Middle-aged, probably. Somehow it was hard to say—he had a sort of ageless air.

He did not look like an organ harvester now, but she did remember.

She’d fallen off the roof, momentum slamming her head into the side when he caught her. The sheer terror of gravity’s sudden claim had left its impression. After that was mostly blank. She could fuzzily recall staring at leather, hearing soft operatic music. It must have been a vehicle. “How do you know my name?”

“You gave it to me.” He cocked his head. “A bit of amnesia?”

“I guess so. Did you give me yours?”

“Not yet. My name is Hannibal Lecter. Currently I practice psychiatry, but I have also been a medical doctor, so you’ll have to trust me when I tell you to relax. Would you like something for the headache?”

“Oh… Well, yes. Please.”

She should not trust him, but maybe her chances were better if she let him think that she didn’t remember. He walked out.

Her jacket was on the end of the sofa. No way he hadn’t gone through it. But after some consideration she had left her more precious belongings with the sorcerer for safekeeping, and there was really nothing much of value. Just a few clips.

As for her gun… She felt her chest, noticing her shoulder holster gone. It was not on the sofa, either. He’d taken it, and the gun, and the clips. Playing keep-away with her gun she could understand, but this was more like he meant to pretend there had never been any semi-automatic pistol in her possession at all. What the hell kind of game…?

He returned with a glass of water and two pills, and she thought of Wonderland.

“What is it?” she said, trying not to sound too suspicious.

“Just acetaminophen.”

“I don’t know what that is.”

“Tylenol.”

“Um…”

“A mild analgesic. Very common, nothing opioid. Would you like to see the label?”

“Uh…if it’s not too much trouble.”

He brought the bottle of Tylenol, which did indeed indicate _pain reliever/fever reducer_ on the commercially printed label, but she couldn’t focus well on the fine print.

He noticed. “Can you read it?”

“…Not easily.”

“We’ll have to play this game. How many fingers?” He held up three, and she said so; she followed their movement with her eyes, and assured him that she was not especially dizzy. Then he had her count to ten, and asked her full name.

She felt uncomfortable telling him the truth, actually, but she had no way of knowing how much she’d said before. “Yumi Starseeker.”

That earned a skeptical look. A little unconventional for this world, then. “Funny name, I know, but it’s mine.”

“Are you wearing colored contacts, Yumi? It’s not safe to leave those in.”

So her amber eyes were not very conventional here either. “No…”

He peered closer. “What a strange color. Where are you from?”

She looked away, frowned, moved her lips as if forgetting something she was about to say. Falsehood had never been one of her strong suits and maybe he would know, but she hadn’t decided what to say yet. At least she did not have to feign nervousness.

“Don’t worry. I think it will all come back to you soon. You just need rest.”

“…Here?”

“Of course. I told you I am a doctor. I apologize, I went through your jacket in search of some identification, but you weren’t carrying much. Not even a phone. So unless you can think of someone to call…?”

“…No, not now.” _Not in this universe._

“Then that settles it. Let me help you to the guest room.”

She wasn’t a huge fan of it, but she was too weak at the moment to come up with a viable alternative.

Maybe this whole realm-jumping thing with no plan was not really the best idea as a human. She had no power, no money, no friends, and now she’d lost her gun. About time to formulate a better strategy.

But a room like this evinced a certain level of wealth, which since this was a human world meant power, and the doctor had the presence of someone aware of it. Though not a callous presence. Words like _solicitous_ and _congenial_ were not amiss. The type you would want on your side. Or at least, that was what he projected.

More likely, the type of whom you wouldn’t want to be on the _wrong_ side.

If she was shaking a little as she took the acetaminophen, that didn’t necessarily mean fear, after the physical trauma.

“Thank you… Dr. Lecter.”

“Good. You’re encoding new information.” His smile was rather charming, but then she wasn’t quite seeing straight. He told her which way his room was, and urged her not to hesitate to shout if she felt ill, because that might indicate the need for more urgent measures—and wished her good night.

She could not remember getting to this house, and she had very little idea what sort of world this was. So she had to go through what she knew.

Murders she had seen. And tactical killings, assassinations, warfare. There was always fear at the root, in one way or another. That…had no fear in it. That was the kind of killing which did not happen once. Something repeated. With procedure. With rubber fucking gloves.

Which forced her to digest the fact that she, with no established identity in this world, no papers, no colleagues nor comrades nor even passing acquaintances, had no one to look for her if she disappeared.

She was the perfect crime.

 _Lie low_ had been an optimistic assessment. Until the key worked again, Yumi had to survive.

 

-

 

She woke to daylight, but couldn’t say what hour.

The headache was much better. Yumi stood, testing her balance, which seemed intact, and wandered around.

This was an irritatingly familiar feeling, stuck in some rich guy’s house. Maybe she could sneak out. And go where? At least grab something valuable first…

No. No, that was really not the best course of action.

_He knows that I saw. Even if he thinks I don’t remember now, he won’t take the chance on the amnesia holding. But he told me his name. Since I’m in his house, assume it was his real name. No way is he letting me go._

She went gingerly downstairs. The old-world clock ticked softly into 11:21 just as Dr. Lecter appeared, dressed in a dark plaid suit with a pocket square and a reddish paisley tie.

“Good, you’re awake,” he said, warm as one might please. “I’d like to fix you some breakfast, but I have an appointment soon.”

“I shouldn’t impose,” she attempted weakly. “Thank you. But I should be going.”

“Have you remembered where it is you should go?”

On the coffee table there was a newspaper, which she had been about to pick up. She stole its name. “Um. New York.”

“That’s not very close. What were you doing in Baltimore?”

Damn. Misfire. She had to effect confusion again. “…I don’t remember.”

“Then we shouldn’t have you going anywhere just yet.” He picked up something flat, like a thin black book, from beside the newspaper. “Here. At least you have your name, which must be rare enough for a fruitful search, so if you have any connections at all it might help to look yourself up.”

“Oh…thank you.” She took the object, frowning. Some piece of technology with which she should be familiar, but wasn’t, at all.

“You haven’t used one before?” He took it back and opened a cover so she could see, and touched a compass symbol on the screen. A blank box came up. “There’s the browser. It’s a touch screen, you see? Don’t worry, it’s fairly intuitive. I’ll be back in two hours. My home is yours. But don’t try to read for very long; you should rest your head.”

“I see… Thanks.”

She sat down again, and found that she wasn’t all that unfamiliar with electronic tablets. After a few minutes of poking around it was usable. Naturally a search on herself would reveal nothing, but she could search for information.

The best she found, before the return of a headache proved his advice to be quite valid, was that New York was a big city, and Baltimore (which she spelled wrong at first, but the system recognized it) was also a city; and they were 187.5 miles apart. She tried reading the newspaper, but the print was too small.

In the bathroom Yumi splashed water on her face and then drank some. She wished she could take a shower, but her comfort level in here was insufficient for disrobing even though she presently had the house to herself. Washing her hair would hurt, anyway.

So she had to sit idle for a while. But there were worse fates. …Which she would have to save her energy to avoid.

Finally Dr. Lecter returned, and ushered her to a gleaming kitchen. He removed his suit jacket and donned a chef’s apron. “You must be hungry.”

“Oh… Yes. Thank you.” She didn’t particularly trust him enough to eat anything he made her, but maybe if he let her watch him… Then she was distracted by an elaborate apparatus on the counter, all glass and silvery metal. “Is that for coffee?”

“Yes. It’s a syphon brewer.” He looked pleased, for some reason. “But I would strongly advise you not to have any caffeine yet.”

“Oh.”

“No dietary restrictions?” he asked, at the refrigerator.

“I’m allergic to roofies.” After the words were out she wanted to kick herself. Such a stupid attempt to dissemble her apprehension only succeeded in advertising it with a blinking neon sign. Of course he did not smile. “I’m sorry. That wasn’t funny.”

“You don’t trust me,” he observed.

“No. I don’t. I still can’t remember getting here. It’s a little nerve wracking. I’m sorry. I think…maybe I should go to a hospital.”

“Yes, that may be for the best. But if you’re not in immediate distress, you may well be waiting the better part of a day for help. So I insist that you eat first. You didn’t find out anything about yourself? No Facebook page?”

“…No. I don’t…use those things very much.” That was not a lie, at least.

“Then, you _don’t_ have any dietary restrictions?”

“Um…no.”

“I usually subsist on light fare in the middle of the day, but how about brunch, for you?”

“Thank you… Can I help?”

Cutting a couple links of sausage from plastic wrapping, he eyed her with amusement. “I wouldn’t have you playing with knives and stovetops. You should sit.” He nodded toward the little sitting space, where there were a couple of armchairs.

She took a seat as directed, but too heavily, so that the goose egg on the back of her head painfully struck overstuffed leather.

He could see her cradling her head. “Are you all right?”

“Yes…I just sat down too fast.”

“Well, do be careful, Yumi.”

She began to wish she had not given her real name. It felt too close when he said it. Like one of those fairy tales, where knowing the name of something grants one the power to command it…

But she waited, and the savory aromas that wafted up with the sounds of frying were quite appetizing, after all. At last he called her into the dining room.

It was a _lush_ space, there was no other word for it—greenery covering one wall, and deep blue texture that sucked the light in, so that it seemed dim even with daylight coming in at the windows. The decor on the opposite wall was wild and exotic. The table shone richly.

He had heated some soup for himself, and it was pancakes and sausage for her—much fancier than a diner, impeccable presentation, embellished with fanned strawberries, orange juice in a goblet and warmed syrup in a little crockery pitcher.

“Oh… Thank you. This is making me wish I was dressed better…”

“There’s no need to worry about that. You’re my guest, for the moment. And it’s hardly anything elaborate.” But he was not without pride in the products of his kitchen. “Buttermilk pancakes, small batch Vermont maple syrup, and Hungarian sausage. Strawberries are not in season, of course…but it helps to add a little color.”

“It looks wonderful…”

“Please.” He gestured invitingly, and she felt much too self-conscious to enjoy a meal, but by now she was hungry.

So on went the maple syrup, and she took a few bites of fluffy perfect pancake, and then carefully sliced up the sausage and speared a piece, and he was looking at her too closely.

She glanced up, involuntary as an animal sensing a predator. “Yes?”

He only gave her a warm smile. “It’s good to see that your appetite is healthy, that’s all.”

No. It was warm, but she’d been stared at by a black-eyed doctor before. That _observation_ was too well known to her. It meant nothing good. It meant…

The cooler. _“You can see it, more or less.”_


	3. Unnatural

Yumi’s mind raced, even while some part of it was stuck on _no no no, that is not a thing that happens, that is completely crazy._ But she knew it. The connection lit up with absolute certainty. That cooler. This meal. That look.

She could stumble off to the bathroom and make herself sick (it wouldn’t take much effort) and blame it on the concussion. Then, at least if he meant to keep up the pretense, he would have to take her to a hospital. The rest she would figure out later. This was the plan that came to her between blinks.

Its flaw was that she had already let her expression change, and the odds that he had not noticed were as shit terrible as her skills at dissembling.

She carefully put down her fork with the piece of sausage to rest it on the plate. It still smelled delicious, which was such a bizarre level of cognitive dissonance that it made her angry.

But she had to go very, very carefully. This was no dragon at which one could puff up in response. This was a test which she would either pass by the skin of her teeth, or fail at the cost of…some internal organs, perhaps.

“Is something wrong, Yumi?” he said.

Falsehood was not her forte. Speaking lines with truth between them, however, was a skill she had picked up.

“I’m really terribly sorry for the trouble,” the lines went. “I know you made it for me after asking, so maybe at this point I shouldn’t insist. But I’ve only just remembered with the savory aroma in front of me. I never eat real meat—only fish.”

“I am sorry to hear that,” he replied. Her sense of danger spiked even higher. “But you can hardly be blamed for blanking on a few things. Is anything else coming back to you?”

“I have…some recollection of events,” she enunciated slowly, picking words like steps in a minefield. “It is rather hazy, though. In fact, once I leave your house, I’m sure I’ll forget entirely.”

“I doubt your memory is so unreliable.” He looked at her as if the conversation were merely interesting. “But what about the anterograde amnesia?”

“I’m sorry?”

“Anterograde. Forward, from the point of the trauma. Do you remember getting here?”

“I actually don’t. I remember pain and fancy music, and that’s all. I…” Her mouth gone dry with nerves, she took a sip of juice, trusting that to be oranges. “I do owe you my thanks for not letting me fall off a building. And I appreciate the hospitality, Dr. Lecter, but really, I don’t want to be a burden.”

“I can hardly turn you out on the street. You don’t have anywhere else to go in this world, do you?”

“Did I mention that?” Yumi blinked. “It’s…generally not the kind of thing that people believe.”

“It’s not,” he agreed, “but I can smell it on you.”

“What?” Her voice squeaked.

“Something different. Other than human. And you appeared so suddenly in such an odd place. Why did you come?”

“Does that matter? Aren’t you going to kill me?” She shouldn’t count herself so defenseless, but the man had already bested her while she held a gun… Really, it was just disappointing.

“I don’t think so. I am too intrigued.” He leaned in, gaze fixed on her. “But I will have to ask you to stay here and do as I say, and to be completely honest with me.”

She paled and straightened. “Yes, sir.”

His head cocked. “There’s military service in your history?”

“Not exactly. Paramilitary, one might say. I have to ask… Am I expected to…set aside my dietary restrictions?”

“No. I could refuse to give you anything else until hunger drove you to it, but that is uninteresting. Survival will always overcome principle.” The smile was warm again, if rather conspiratorial. “I would much rather see my endeavors genuinely enjoyed.”

This was a table large enough for entertaining. What had been served here and enjoyed in the genuine bliss of ignorance?

Her appetite was gone, but she knew she needed to eat, and to make a show of a certain level of goodwill. She picked up fork and knife, pushing the piece of sausage off the fork, as delicately as possible with the tremble in her hands, and took another bite of pancake. The perfect fluffiness felt dry and sticky now. It wasn’t uncontaminated.

“I wouldn’t say that survival _overcomes_ principle,” she remarked over her uneasy heartbeat. “In extremis one might decide to compromise. But, even where survival is concerned, one still tries to adhere to principle as closely as possible.”

 

-

 

Gripping the edge of the dark granite counter, Yumi stared at herself hard in the bathroom mirror.

She had availed herself of the shower (though indeed unable to wash her hair) and now had no qualms about standing around naked. Truth was laid bare, after all. That was far preferable, even if deadly uncertainty remained. With the game board set she could figure out how to move _just long enough_.

The directives were simple enough. Obey, and keep him interested.

He wanted her stories. Out of curiosity, he said, both professional and idle. She did not think they could be so interesting, but if that was the currency which would pay her rent in his domain, then have them he would.

She was a reader, ever hungry for words, for the namestuff of the human consciousness she had chosen. And young though she might be in that consciousness, she was also a traveler. She had lost her memory and regained it in all its power. Stories filled her. Let them rise. Let her live.

“Scheherazade,” she told the mirror.

Though hopefully it would take less than a thousand and one nights before she could quit this realm.

But first, more days of rest went by, without even reading, at the doctor’s insistence. He brought her clothes, going so far as to guess correctly at her size, and takeout sushi. She thanked him, and took acetaminophen, and slept.

 

-

 

Eventually she came to a point where enough rest was enough. Bored and uncertain, she wandered about the house looking for something to poke at besides an electronic tablet.

She had found the stereo system off the side of the kitchen and managed to make it play the radio, station-surfing until she found the overproduced bomping stuff that appealed to her—and she could only imagine how she looked, enjoying the well-amplified bass, when the lights switched on and the doctor’s shadow fell into the room.

_“King with no crown—I’m just a holy fool and baby it’s so cruel but—”_

Yumi stopped still, feeling like a dog who has been caught chewing the furniture. Of course, she had not heard him come in, and she had not been watching the time, either.

“You really must ask before using the sound system,” he said.

“Yes, sir. Sorry.” She turned it off. “Um… Excuse me. I’ll…clean up.”

He held a finger to his lips and let her go. Chastised, she went upstairs.

Only then did it occur to her to wonder why she had stayed inside to do nothing, rather than just walk out while he was at work. Although he had already answered that. She had nowhere else to go in this world…

 

-

 

It’s amazing how quickly you can become sensitive to something on which your life depends. To be sure, someone with that sort of proclivity was capable of hiding a great deal, and usually he showed only a deep equanamity, or (particularly when cooking) an inwardly focused sort of delight. But, even without actually talking to him very much, she had already learned to pick up on any hint of displeasure.

In the evening, despite his perfect composure, there was a rather strong hint. Yumi was in more trouble than she’d thought. She apologized again.

“I believe I mentioned that you should remain quiet during my business hours. This is a residential neighborhood; there will be noise complaints.” Dr. Lecter crossed the kitchen toward her, bespoke-tailored menace. “And it’s incredibly discourteous to go poking at my belongings without permission.”

“I’m sorry… I didn’t…think it was so loud…”

Her heart began to pound with rabbity instinct, while her mind, well trained to deal with fear, catalogued objects within reach as weapons—a wine bottle, a santoku. But it was fear itself which was expected of her. He wanted to see her afraid.

She knew men like this.

It made her furious, but if she spoke now only vitriolic fury would come out, and when she had already given offense that might well be the end of her. Wait. Wait.

Apparently satisfied for the moment, he let it go. “I trust we won’t have such an incident again.”

“…No, sir.”

“Good.” He smiled, too brightly. The sense of reassurance it gave her was also infuriating. “Of course, the fault is partly mine, for leaving you so idle… It has been four days. You must be feeling better?”

“Yes… I think so. I can read the newspaper now.” Or she had tried, though even with the words clearly visible, the snippets of world it presented were too complicated to put together.

“That is encouraging. But don’t do too much at once.” He moved closer to her, reaching up. “May I?”

And she did not protest—it was a very strange power he had, almost a sort of magic, to command any sort of mood he wanted out of the sheer physicality of his presence. First a threat, now a balm. The efficient gentleness as he lightly tested the bruise on the back of her head was nothing short of warming.

She shied away from it.

“Is it still so painful? The swelling is down, at least…”

“That’s not—” She made an exasperated gesture, or something warding. “The concussion is not the problem. More like whiplash.”

He blinked, effecting concern.

“You can’t do that, you can’t—” She paused to breathe slowly, grasping for the patience to not speak too hastily. “May I say something?”

“Yes?”

“I—I object to this. You don’t have to frighten me just because you can. I’ll do respect, you know, it doesn’t _have_ to be fear. I know to be afraid of you. I think the deliberate reminder is rather crass, honestly. And then—and _then_ you smile, and you’re kind, and I can’t really handle it, I haven’t even seen another person here, and I would very much appreciate it if the one to whom I’m apparently beholden would allow me a coherent environment.”

Silence seeped in. Had she gone overboard? Was that it?

“That is fair,” he admitted vaguely after a moment. “So, you are feeling more coherent? Not so fatigued?”

“No, sir. I mean, yes, I think I’m more coherent.”

“Then I’ll ask you to do two things. To begin telling me about yourself, and to make yourself a little useful.”

“…Useful how?”

“How is your hand at the culinary arts?” He opened the refrigerator.

“Um… I was never very good. I’ve been told I have an unrefined palate.”

That was not a lie, though she was hoping it might excuse her. Do his cooking? She’d faint and crack her head _again_. Also, why the hell would he let her hold a knife?

“Ignorance can be rectified,” he said, putting down something wrapped in white paper. “It’s red snapper. Have you ever pan-seared?”

She had to stifle a sigh of relief at the distinctly fishy smell. “I mean…I’ve fried things.”

“We will rectify that.”

 

-

 

When he asked point-blank whether she had given her real name, she had to explain it, and why she was traveling between universes. The stories. The traces of _other_ stuck inside her, which apparently had a scent that he could detect, which was why he believed her at all.

“A demon from the beginning of creation?” Dr. Lecter repeated. “That does sound too fantastic. But it is something far out of the ordinary.”

“How can you smell things like that?” she wondered. “That can’t be normal either. Is it really scent? Or some other sense?”

“It is. I simply have an unusually keen sense.”

“Most people would mistrust their senses first, rather than accepting the fantastic.”

“Most people find it more comfortable to reject a great deal of possibilities.” He smiled, and called her cooking…passable.

She did not add that if it was merely ellipsis-passable, that had to be at least partly his fault, since he had monitored her every second.

After dinner, he took her upstairs into a cozy room—a walnut-paneled study, into which she had ventured at some point during the dawdling day, and as quickly left out of apprehension that she might damage anything she touched. Many of the books appeared to be antiques, housed protectively in hardwood shelving with glass doors, and she suspected that she would not be able to read most of them at any rate. She saw several variations of _DANTE_ and _COMEDIA_ and _COMMEDIA di DANTE_ , and grandiose names like Cicero, Aurelius, Plutarch, Augustine, and still others in unknown scripts. Where the walls were not hidden by bookshelves, they sported woodcut prints in diverse styles—one of a medieval city; one of a fox and a deer…

Although the space was not cramped, Yumi felt she had to step carefully as he invited her to sit in one of the low leather chairs in front of the hearth.

The amber-shaded banker’s lamp he switched on tinged the surroundings even more warm and inviting, but lest the preponderance of literature begin to put her at ease, she noticed the title _Grand Dictionnaire de Cuisine_. There were quite enough cognates to make it a legible reminder. She looked away from the leather-bound curios, her gaze landing on the writing desk, where a sleek silvery device that she guessed was a late-model compact computer sat quietly juxtaposed with an astronomical clock from some previous century.

It was chilly from the dehumidifier that kept the old books comfortable. Dr. Lecter built a small fire, allowing her to settle, before taking the other seat. They faced each other more than the hearth, and she had an inkling that the chairs must have been recently turned. Wouldn’t one usually have the seating face the fire in a room like this? Yumi was tempted to examine the carpet for telltale indentations. But even if she were to find them, that could hardly have any effect on her current predicament.

“So where do you begin?” he prompted.

“I begin… I begin very small. Smaller than a child, in a world that was not a world. I wasn’t human, but a little invisible, insubstantial thing… A fairy, or a spirit, that’s close enough. I say unseen watcher, because that was what we did. We would visit a human realm for sport, and watch. And then I grew unsatisfied with that small existence. I wanted to touch their beauty, I wanted to feel emotion as they did. So I _became_ human. That…isn’t a usual thing. I’m unnatural. Maybe I shouldn’t exist.”

“If I understand correctly, then—you _chose_ a human life?”

“Yes.”

“That may be unique. But I would not say unnatural. It is the nature of consciousness to make choices, unusual as they may be.”

“Humans don’t choose to be born. So I’m unnatural.”

“Some would argue that we simply don’t remember choosing. Were you then born as a child, with sentience intact?”

“No. I formed half-grown. An adolescent. It couldn’t be otherwise. The inbetween, the ones who suddenly awaken to their potential, to life’s potential, and they crave everything at once. Everything is drama, everything is a drug, everything is power. The world is yours, but it stands against you, and everything cries out for revolution. I came into being in that state.”

“The price of that awakening is the loss of innocence, the death of childhood,” said the doctor. “The shattering of faith in one’s parents, in particular. But you are saying that you had neither parents nor childhood.”

“No, I didn’t.”

“That does set you apart. But no growth can happen without sacrificing something. What would you say that you lost?”

“Immortality,” she said without hesitation. “Not that the watchers are invulnerable. They can be hurt, or destroyed… But they aren’t mortal; they have no grasp of death, or even time, really. I am growing older. Someday I’ll die. And there might be other things inside me, but I think then I’ll just be gone, like any other human.”

“Was it much of a price?” he challenged. “You understand it already—that human life is precious because it is not everlasting.”

“Just because I don’t regret it doesn’t mean there was no sacrifice. Maybe it’s more accurate to say that what I lost was…the safety of a removed existence. What cannot be touched, cannot be hurt. In becoming human I became vulnerable to all the cruelty and violence of others.” Yumi stared at him, pushing back. “Which can be terrifying.”

“Is it the vulnerability which terrifies you? Or the knowledge that you now have in yourself that same capacity for cruelty?”

“At the moment?” She could only laugh. “What do you think, Doctor?”

He ignored the gibe. “I think that is not unlike the loss of innocence. Children believe themselves invulnerable, too. Coming of age is the acquaintance with both sex and death.”

“That sounds simplistic, somehow. And bleak.” 

“But not entirely wrong?”

“No. Not entirely.”

“Let’s be done with generalizations, and hear more about you. What beauty did you see, that made you wish to partake?”

“Well, it wasn’t death; it was the other chapter in the bildungsroman……”

 

-

 

He did not expect her to simply tell tales in chronological order. It was more organic, like a professional session; when a bit of discussion thinned out he prompted her for something else, not necessarily a coherent narrative. Which suited her well: she remembered the ferocity of emotion more than the concrete truth of events from that time, the place itself so surreal and heavy with mystery that things never quite lined up coherently. And after all, she’d lost her memory of it for a while. It still felt blurred, like an overexposed photograph in which details couldn’t be discerned.

And it meant she could keep a few things to herself.

As another day passed, this also eased the worry that she might run out of story before she was able to leave. It still was impossible to say when that might be. In this place she couldn’t hear the watchers at all, which was mildly alarming. She doubted the key could have taken them here on its own. Maybe the sorcerer would realize his mistake and find a way to extricate her…

But that was out of her control. All that she could control was making herself _interesting_ and _useful_.

Conversations with the doctor were not actually unpleasant. That was itself frightening, in its way, but she was no lone wolf and she needed the interaction, even if the terms were unequal. And hopefully she could keep buying herself time with scintillating discussions of human subjectivity and its cosmological significance.

Now he had her setting the table. Or helping, rather; she had not yet memorized the place for everything. Trying to form mnemonics, she peered closer at the decor, and only then did she get a direct look at the painting above the fireplace.

“Isn’t that awfully lurid for a dining room?” she remarked, surprised more than anything else.

“It’s the original, supposedly lost,” he replied. “Or at least a contemporary copy. Attributed to Boucher—an eighteenth-century French painter of some significance. I thought it deserved a place of honor.”

“You ascribe value to things based only on pedigree? It’s a painting; it was meant to be looked at. Doesn’t the image itself matter at all? You seem to give a lot of consideration to aesthetics.”

“You find the imagery unsuited to a dining room? It’s not a large enough piece to be particularly obtrusive—just a hint of old-world sensuality to accent the sensory affair of dining.”

“It’s a bird staring at a vulva. That accents nothing but its own erotic-grotesque.”

“That’s rather reductionist. Particularly for Leda. She’s there in her entirety, hiking up her skirts of her own accord.”

Yumi raised her eyebrows. “I take it you didn’t name her…”

“Of course not. It’s a scene from classical mythology. The bird is the god Zeus, visiting her in the shape of a swan, and mortal Leda’s children will hatch from eggs.” He gave her a little smile. “Divine, and unnatural.”

“Divine and unnatural. Is that how you see yourself, Dr. Lecter?”

The smile deepened and he looked away, as if she’d said something clever, or endearing. “It’s just a decoration.”

Now he was being coy with her, but that was really the best she could expect if she asked. There were no cracks in his persona. Though she knew something of what lay behind it, and she did not, after all, want his stories in return.


	4. Ugly

He continued to bring home sea creatures and insist that she learn something in the kitchen. Meanwhile, he still did his own cooking, slow roasts that she would not see in process; but he set her certain tasks, and old skills turned out to be quite essential—detachment, compartmentalizing.

Once things made it into the kitchen, their origins were obscured. They may as well have been the lamb or pork named on recipe cards. Maybe they were. It would have been easy to pretend, but Yumi hated that sort of pretending. There was a sharp difference between compartmentalizing and self-delusion, much like the difference between discretion and cowardice.

And so she treated it like work. Grace had always been out of her reach, but she moved as efficiently as she was able, and replied to every word with _sir_. To codify authority in that way was all part of the strategy. Orders were orders, fitting neatly into their compartment.

Though he did not have her getting very close. She cleared the table, and took care of the dishes, and the detritus from her attempts; he cleaned up after his own projects, just as he prepared them by himself, and took them as a main course from which she was entirely exempt. This was not out of consideration, she thought, nothing like it—but a certain insular quality, a delineation of territory, because another’s revulsion would intrude on the serenity of his world.

But maybe it amused him to have her tiptoe around it, uncertain and afraid to ask, forced to desensitize herself.

This still was not the strangest part, to her.

“Sir, I’m wondering something.”

In the study she took a role more akin to patient, and would drop the deferential, but they were in the kitchen.

“What is that?”

She turned to face him with the gleaming steel chef’s knife she’d just finished washing. “Why do you trust me?”

“You said that you were sent here by mistake. Knowing you’re an intruder, you would rather manage without doing harm, if possible, until the mistake can be corrected.”

“Without doing harm.” This was very dangerous terrain; she should not have spoken at all. And yet he must know that she would think of it. “Isn’t it true that I do more harm by not acting? Don’t I have a moral obligation, even if I end up somehow worse off than before?”

“I think you are afraid of having any effect in a place where you had no intention to be. You don’t want to care about this world, so its moral obligations have no hold over you.”

“Moral obligations are universal, aren’t they?” Having wiped the knife dry, she put it back in its place. “Or pan-universal, as it were.”

“And yet you’re not concerned with categorical imperatives. You’re a knight-errant with a very particular code of chivalry.”

“You have a sense of my code?”

“ _To thine own self be true._ That’s the first precept.”

“That makes me sound rather self-centered.”

“You are, but not only _your_ self. You have an abhorrence for lies and pretense, especially inward. You fight against people’s refusal to live in accordance with their own true desires.” He removed his apron and hung it up, and peered at her sidelong. “A champion of the self in its purest form. I find it very admirable.”

She felt her face grow hot and scowled. “I’ll thank you not to flatter me, Dr. Lecter.”

“I did not. Flattery is insincere.”

“Well, sir, then I will thank you not to admire me.”

“That threatens you?”

“Yes,” she said curtly, and washed her hands.

In the study he crossed his legs and used the previous conversation for a segue. “So how was it that you came to join a paramilitary organization? Those who place their philosophical value on the primacy of the self are not often suited to that line of work.”

“Actually, the answer to that is simple. At the time, I had no self.”

“How do you mean?”

“That was something traumatic. You don’t usually start the session with the traumatic stuff, do you?”

“…You’re right, it’s generally safer to establish a rapport before opening up such things. Which I will certainly respect, although you are not exactly a patient.” He shifted, as if changing gears. “Did joining an organization help you to regain that sense of self?”

“Yes, because I had comrades who saw me as a person. It was the black-ops unit of a huge corporation, which also had its own very sizeable military—not an organization unto itself. And it was a little disorganized when I joined, actually. There’d been some internal turmoil, which would come back to haunt us. But I decided to join, and then I was one of them, doing the dirty work protecting that company’s interests.”

“Black-ops? So this was dirty work indeed.”

“Very. Yes, I’ve been in combat, I’ve killed people, more than a few. I’ve had my hands so red that my friend scrubbed it out of my fingernails with paper towels and isopropyl because I couldn’t move.” Restless, Yumi stood to pace. “And maybe I took shape in opposition to that. Like I saw myself kill and when I was able to say _this is ugly, I don’t like it,_ there was the seed of me. Of something that would pursue laughter and beauty instead. But that was my job, so being able to do it was part of me too.”

“Being _able_ to do it? Did you apply yourself to that vocation without ever deriving any satisfaction from the work? You found the act of killing offensive, but never felt any rush of power in taking a life?”

“Power?” She laughed. “No, I wouldn’t say _power_. I used a sword, you know. And people think fencing is supposed to be elegant, but when you use it to kill? It’s shit, literally shit, you’re too close and you can smell the bowels empty—or if you have to go for the gut first sometimes it gets on your blade. Bodies are so fragile, anyway, even in a world where magic can heal, and killing only reminds you that you can yourself be killed. In learning to fight I felt powerful, but in action the only rush is terror. And then nausea.”

“You must have acclimated. You don’t appear to have symptoms of PTSD.”

“Well…not from that. I did get used to it, somehow. And then of course I had to find some satisfaction in it—in following orders, carrying out a mission, protecting the city. But that only came later. Killing always remained unpleasant.”

“You say things like _unpleasant_ and _ugly_ , but not _wrong_. So you felt no guilt, even before you acclimated?”

“Not that I never felt guilt. But we would just drink that off. Those were the words we used, _ugly_ , _nasty_ , because in our space it wasn’t _wrong_ , we were fulfilling our purpose. Which half the time was taking out terrorists. It was _dirty_ work, though, and no one would pretend that it wasn’t.” 

“How did you reconcile with that? Doing dirty work, and committing ugly acts—you found this to be in direct conflict with your priorities. Aesthetically, if not morally.” 

“Maybe you’re right about my amorality… The first time I had to kill someone, I froze for a second, because I didn’t think I should have that power, or something. But then—well, I had a rifle, that was the weapon at hand, and you may have noticed my less than stellar marksmanship—and I shot the man in the throat first, which obviously was awful and disgusting, and that was the part I hated. I remember being angry at myself because his next of kin would have to bury him looking like that. Not because they’d have to bury him at all—death is inevitable anyway, isn’t it? It felt like a crime not just because I’d taken a life, but because that act of destruction was so _ugly_.” Yumi stood and looked at a bookcase, as if the words of some ancient could explain things better. “It was easy enough to reconcile, when I found that it gained me approval from comrades and superiors, and _justified_ when I could feel that I was protecting something important. But it was depressing for a while. I felt pointless, perpetrating deeds of such gravity that enabled no pleasure nor beauty.”

“You never lost that awareness of the gravity of it,” he observed. “What did you do to honor those lives that you took?”

“Well…I didn’t think I had the right to. It was work; we weren’t allowed to feel anything about it. The best I could do was raise a glass to whatever was lost, and appreciate that we still lived.”

“So to protect your own psyche you looked away from its ugliness and pursued beauty.”

“That’s entirely accurate.”

“If that act of destruction did instead give rise to pleasure and beauty, would it be vindicated? Or even something worth pursuit?”

She turned to him with brows drawn. He looked interested in her response, but nothing more. “Are you asking _me_ for absolution?”

“I’m asking you for speculation.”

“So you’ve taken a statement which I made about my own experiences, logically inverted it, and turned it into an abstraction with which you hope to see me paint myself into a philosophical corner.”

“I hope for nothing but your honest opinion.” His curiosity was pure, open, practically innocent.

“…My honest opinion is I have difficulty forming one,” she said slowly. “I’ve never killed without a professional reason, not even for personal feelings. I can’t imagine creating beauty out of it, certainly not enough to negate that ugliness and terror. So I have no idea if there could be vindication that way. It’s undreamt of in _my_ philosophy.”

“You can’t imagine it, but you don’t dismiss it as a possibility?”

“How can I? It’s only in the eye of the beholder, after all. But that’s exactly why aesthetics can’t be ethics.” She paced more. “Socially, of course, it’s irredeemable, to seek pleasure in something that causes others pain. And I was never a proponent of an _isolated_ self.”

“You say that you reconciled that terrible act because it earned you social capital in your situation. So which is the greater crime? To be false to oneself and connected, or true to oneself and isolated?”

After a moment’s deliberation, for some reason she found it utterly comical that he had really shifted the conversation to himself, and she grinned incredulously, absorbed into a realm of the absurd. “That’s a terrible dilemma!—which, if I could answer, I’d be more god than human. Actually, I doubt any gods I know would have an answer, either.”

He didn’t quite smile back, though he seemed to share a little in the humor. “Perhaps the gods only roll their eyes at our foolish dilemmas.”

“Or they place bets.”

Seeing that the thread of the debate had gotten a bit tangled, he changed the subject. “You must not have liked to commit those ugly scenes to memory. But do you recall the incident that gave you the scar on your cheek?”

“I do. I recall that very well.” Her smile turned wistful. “And it wasn’t an incident. It’s the whole story.”

He let her tell it until her voice began to tire, and after that she could not sleep for a while.

It was bothering her that he’d said anything about himself. He had not done that before, and though she laughed at the time it was opaque and deadly perilous.

The following evening she wandered into the kitchen too early, and strictly she knew better than that but she was thirsty or bored, or stupid. Baroque music drifted on the air. Dr. Lecter stood in apron and rolled-up shirtsleeves, hair neatly back, sautéing something, lightly tossing the pan and then pausing to take a sip of red wine; and she felt as if she’d been standing on her head.

So engrossed in his craft, he gave no sign of noticing her right away. But then he cordially held up the bottle with the label toward her. “Côtes du Rhône?”

She had enough presence of mind to murmur, “No, thank you,” and retreat. He probably thought it was funny. Wine would do her no good; she was already inexplicably woozy, and had to sit on the stairs rather than making it all the way back up. Was it still concussion symptoms, after this long?

No…it was cognitive dissonance.

Later she dreamed of the same scene altered. He smiled at her, splashed with cinnabar.

 

-

 

Last night’s dialogue floated cloudy in her mind. Free will versus desire versus fate, and the many conflicts which loyalty would inevitably present. Grey morning light spilled into the kitchen. Dr. Lecter greeted her in a dressing-gown, which if they crossed paths so early always disoriented her, like time had come unstuck and eras were mashed together. But the syphon brewer was out and when he offered its product all other concerns vanished. “Yes! Please!”

Yumi had been contrarily glad that he cited her head injury and refused to let her have any—she adored coffee, and very much wanted to try it from the fancy apparatus, and meanwhile felt reluctant to accept anything pleasant from him.

But. Coffee. An offer she could not refuse.

The stuff was fabulous. She had to savor it, with small talk about how she had once worked in a sweet little café in a fashionable neighborhood in another world, before she went paramilitary. “I keep going back to it. Coffee is a constant. I’m a firm adherent of the custom of taking it in the morning. The confirmation of material reality in the waking world.”

It was an overblown examination of the fact that she simply liked hot water flavored with roasted beans, but he seemed to appreciate it anyway. “A constant, you say; but what if you end up in a world where coffee does not exist?”

“Then I guess I’d be shit out of luck.”

He gave her a sharp look.

“Sorry. I…also have an appreciation for the linguistic idiosyncrasies of vulgarity.”

At least the rationalization managed to amuse him a bit. “Vulgar language must be kept in reserve, or it loses its power.”

“Of course… Well, to your question, I suppose the answer is that in anticipation of that eventuality, I should accept a refill wherever it’s offered.”

He obliged, and she thanked him, and then, since he appeared to be feeling indulgent, decided to broach a certain topic.

She gave it a few more minutes and then said, “May I ask a favor?”

“What do you need, Yumi?”

The vocabulary did not go unnoticed. It had better be something she needed, or she should not ask. The tone was light enough, but there was a certain stern weight in the use of her name.

She didn’t need, not technically…well, yes, she did. “Will you please let me go outside?”

“And go where?”

She held in a sigh. He would not refuse outright; he meant to disabuse her of the notion.

“A park. A coffee shop. Even a mediocre one. Anything.”

“It’s not really safe,” he replied. “Suppose you ran into trouble owing to circumstances outside your control. The authorities would find that you have no identity on record, and you’d be detained. I wouldn’t be able to do anything. Isn’t that what happened before?”

The paranoid scenario was code talk. He was really saying that he didn’t trust her not to run to said authorities on purpose. And then, even if she were detained, and hot-potatoed through hostile bureaucracy, at least she would be away from him—perhaps protected as a witness.

That was not her goal. She only had to see that other people existed. To get _out_ of this space for a while.

“I won’t get into trouble,” she insisted. “I’ll be very quiet.”

“This society is very regimented. Your options are quite limited without proper identification. With your face I doubt you’d even be able to get a beer.”

“I don’t need a beer.” Wheedling would not suit anyone, so she tried being firm. “Of course I understand it’s better to stay in. I’ve just been feeling cabin-feverish, since my head’s improved. I’d really appreciate a chance to walk around and see some things. That’s all.”

“I will take it under consideration.”

That was a conversation ender, and there was nothing more she could do. “Thank you, sir.”

She asked if it was difficult to clean the syphon brewer. He directed her.

What an uneasy truce this was. He could not trust her because she _should_ sneak off and tell on him. He was holding off on the most obvious means of keeping her quiet. Maybe because she was just intriguing enough alive, or maybe because there was no thrill in such a perfect crime. But he _should_ kill her, and she couldn’t trust him not to.

Yet here she stayed, obedient and detached. Savoring coffee and waiting for the ticket out.

Waiting how long? This was her eleventh day in the carnivore’s den. And uneasy truces did not last.

_Then wait ten more,_ she told herself. _And after that, fight or flight._

Coffee made as good a marker as anything.

 

-

 

At dusk the doorbell rang.

Yumi was about to plate her shrimp risotto, of which she was in fact rather proud. It always seemed dangerous to feel anything other than fear, any positive emotion that might cause her to let down her guard, but existing in constant terror was really not a great pastime. And it would chip away at her decision making faculties.

But she did startle at the sudden sound—or maybe it was Dr. Lecter’s movement which startled her—and she knocked over a plate to smash on the hardwood floor, which set off a bit of panic.

“Sh— Oh, no. I’m sorry—I—”

“Don’t worry. We use glass for its beauty and accept the risk that it may break. Put on some gloves and pick it up.”

“Yes, sir…” Her nerves were still jarred. “But—that was—is there someone here? Should I go upstairs?”

“There is no point. If it’s who I suspect, I will have to invite her in, and she will notice the second table setting which you don’t have time to clear.”

“I can—”

He headed for the foyer. “I would rather you tried to compose yourself and clean that up. Let me do the talking.”

“Yes, sir.” She found the stash of rubber gloves and the dustpan.

She considered going upstairs anyway. He probably just wanted to see her squirm under the pressure of not saying anything.

But disobedience would not ultimately serve her well. As she emptied the dustpan into the trash she could hear him saying, “…Which is why you really should let people know when you are coming.”

“I said you didn’t have to feed me,” a friendly female voice replied. “I was hoping I’d catch you well before dinner!”

“And it would be close enough that I would still be compelled to invite you in,” said Dr. Lecter, returning with a gift bag that appeared to contain a bottle, and accompanied by a pale dark-haired woman in a lively dress and a genuine smile. “What use is a well-appointed kitchen if not to entertain friends? Yumi, this is Dr. Alana Bloom, my friend and onetime protégée.”

Yumi looked for a cue and figured she was supposed to be nice. “Hello, Dr. Bloom.”

“Charmed. Yumi, right?” Dr. Bloom strode right over to shake her hand, all poise and glow.

She tried to smile. “Yes.”

Dr. Bloom raised her eyebrows and turned back to their host. “Not interrupting a date, am I…?”

“Nothing of the sort,” he replied smoothly. “A houseguest, actually. The risotto is hers.”

“Oh. Sorry, I can’t enjoy it anyway,” she said to Yumi. “Shellfish allergy. Which is one way of keeping kosher.”

“Alana, I have seen you enjoy prosciutto-wrapped dates and steak with morel cream sauce,” Dr. Lecter remarked.

“Exactly. I only keep it in one way.”

“Well, allow me to offer you some rillettes while you’re here,” he said, going for the refrigerator. “Since my houseguest is a strict pescatarian and has to refuse heartier fare…”

“I guess that’s only fair, since I stopped by to palm off wine on you… If I’m really not interrupting?” Dr. Bloom turned to Yumi again. “So what’s the occasion? Reconnecting with distant cousins?”

Yumi looked at her inarticulately, and then to Dr. Lecter artfully spooning some kind of savory spread onto crostini, and tried not to faint.

Dr. Bloom squinted. “Hannibal, she looks terrified! What’s going on?”

“She’s not a relative. She was in need of aid. There was someone after her.”

“Really? What did you do, rescue a human trafficking victim?”

“No, not trafficking. She had a gun on her, nothing else, and she was trying to flee with a concussion. Stumbled into the road—I nearly ran her over. Then I saw the man chasing her. She begged me not to take her to the hospital. I should have, for head trauma, but…” He let Dr. Bloom deduce the rest.

She did so, pursing her lips. “You’re not a shelter. Recovery from trauma is one thing, but you don’t have the resources yourself to help someone out of a situation like that.”

What situation? Naturally, he was lying, but Yumi was not quite following the story.

“The police already failed her,” said Dr. Lecter, entirely convincing in his good-Samaritan concern. “I couldn’t turn her out on the street. She only has to lie low until an actual relative can make it here to get her.”

Though they were practically speaking as though she weren’t in the room, Dr. Bloom fixed a searching gaze on her. Yumi lowered her eyes from it, staring hopelessly into a corner.

Finally Dr. Bloom turned to him again. “Are you sure this isn’t some kind of scam?”

“She did have a real concussion,” he replied, sparing Yumi a protective glance. “I would rather put my wordly possessions at risk than spend the days wondering whether I turned away from someone in need. The conscience is a persistent burden.”

_I give up,_ she thought.

But Dr. Bloom seemed taken in by his earnest explanations of good intentions. “Then why did you invite me in to meet someone who doesn’t want anyone to know where she is? You’ve only scared her.”

“You brought me a gift,” he said. “And I thought it would be beneficial to show that there are people in the world trustworthy enough that one need not compromise on common decency.”

Yumi blinked to keep from narrowing her eyes at him.

“It’s only a re-gift. Borders on rude, doesn’t it? But you’re a man of principle, if nothing else.” Dr. Bloom shook her head helplessly and took a crostino. “Mm. Principle and craftsmanship. Is it homemade?”

“Of course.”

“Nothing less.” She looked at Yumi again. “Fine place to lie low. You’re missing out, being a pescatarian in _this_ kitchen.”

Yumi forced a smile. “Everyone has their principles.”


	5. Rush

Dr. Bloom pulled her aside before leaving. “You’re okay? Someone is coming to get you?”

“I don’t know,” Yumi fumbled.

“Have you been able to contact anyone? Or is it hard to find someone your abuser doesn’t know?”

Oh—so there was the story. She was a victim, hiding in terror from a man who might kill her. _About that._

“I…um,” she started, realizing she needed to say something resembling an answer. “They…have to come from far away.”

“You’re all right here in the meantime?”

Yumi nodded, not looking at her.

Dr. Bloom clearly trusted him implicitly—enough to be skeptical instead of Yumi’s motives even when her terror was so palpable. She was the new, the unknown, and no matter what she said she would not be believed. Even if Dr. Bloom let Yumi stay with her instead, that would do nothing to remove her from the domain of _his_ control.

_I’m at least ninety percent sure that you just ate—_ She couldn’t even stand to finish the sentence in her head. It was useless.

And yet, with a natural intuition sharpened by professional training, Dr. Bloom could tell something more was amiss. “I know you’re scared. It’s okay to be scared—it’s smart, not weak. But you don’t have to lie to me. What aren’t you saying?” 

Every helpful word only revealed the mineshaft of isolation to be deeper and deeper.

She was a terrible liar. But it was a good deal easier to lie when the truth would not be heard.

“There’s nothing else to it.” Yumi made eye contact then, at least not having to keep anything out of her face. “I just don’t have very much faith in myself right now.”

“That’ll come back.” Dr. Bloom gave her a tentatively encouraging smile, then took her purse from the coathook and withdrew something to hand to her.

Yumi had a brief flash of hope that it would be money, to get away. It was only a business card.

“If you need anything…even just a change of scenery,” said Dr. Bloom. “Wait—here’s my cell number. Use that.” She took out a pen and scribbled on the back.

The only response was to accept it and thank her. The card bore an escutcheon-shaped insignia and the words _Johns Hopkins University_. Holding back a sigh, Yumi put it in her pocket. Its coat of arms was powerless and she would leave it there to get eaten by the washing machine.

Then Dr. Bloom made her departure, apologizing again for the intrusion between mock-admonishing Dr. Lecter for his “irrepressible humanitarianism.”

It was much quieter after she left than it had been before she arrived. Empty space rushed back in where the strength of her personality had stood.

“Napa Chardonnay,” he said, examining the bottle that she’d brought. “Would you like to open it?”

Yumi looked blankly at the label emblazoned _Stags’ Leap_. “Not for me, thank you. I don’t feel up to drinking.”

“Well, if you do, sometime, it’ll go best with buttery shellfish, or mild cheese…”

“I see, sir.” She barely heard him. Putting herself through motions, she went to get another plate, and in the silence she heard it again, _crunch, crunch_ —he had gone for the last of the hors d’oeuvre.

Crunch, through her sanity. For a second Yumi thought she blacked out, but the plate was still in her hand, unthrown, unsmashed. She set it down with exaggerated care and dredged up the proper phrase to utter from the swamp-thickness of coherence. “Please excuse me a moment.”

Her own voice sounded far away from her. She beelined to the half-bath past the dining room and locked the door and hunched over with her elbows on the sink, breathing through her hands because she didn’t have a paper bag, and then she went to lean over the toilet. But she didn’t get sick.

Trying to find a state in which to ground herself, she couldn’t even identify what exactly she was feeling, only that it had too much force and it wanted to lash out and wreck things. Anger, then? Say anger.

And disgust, and fear. Always those.

She waited for a bit more clarity, and then went back in to the kitchen, not wanting him to come looking for her.

“Are you well?” he asked, without even any conspiratorial coyness, which was somehow worse.

As she barely kept herself from exploding Yumi silently sent a prayer of thanks to her former commander for occasionally being such a glacial dickbag. She did not intrinsically possess the capacity to contain the grenade blast of rage, but she had been forced to learn.

“Unfortunately,” she pronounced slowly so the poison would not leak out into her tone, “I seem to have lost my appetite.”

“That is unfortunate.” He poured a couple glasses’ worth of another red wine into a decanter. “You should still try to enjoy the fruits of your labors, if you can. Risotto does not keep particularly well.”

“I don’t think so, sir.”

“You’ll let it go to waste?”

She held in a burst of sarcasm and then gave up on containing everything. “Do not turn this on me. That was _loathsome_. You stand there talking about common decency, when you introduced someone as your friend just to use her as a _prop_ , to torture me? She trusts you, she— Of course you have to lie, you have to be made of lies, but that, that’s the sickest sort of betrayal.”

“And betrayal is the deadliest sin?” Now he looked seriously intrigued.

“Yeah, actually, if you look at my compass.” Heart pounding as if with the nervous rush of confession, she gestured wildly. “I mean, murder’s just a matter of jurisdiction, isn’t it? I cut down children because a company told me to. Good friend of mine had an order to kill twenty thousand civilians in one operation, and he did it. Our hands were so, so red. But we got paid for it! And then we ate and drank and were merry! So what the hell do I get to say? And I’m not society, I don’t write laws, because yes, I consider the betrayal of a friend worse than the murder of a stranger.”

“You put more effort than most into avoiding hypocrisy,” was his only remark.

“It doesn’t actually take a lot of effort.”

“It takes a certain fortitude. A willingness to face oneself and all the possible horrors therein. And strength, of course, does take effort to maintain.”

“Stop flattering me! Or admiring me, or whichever! I don’t need personality coaching from someone who cultivates friendship with the express purpose of violating it!”

His head moved slightly, an infinitesimal tilt, as he stared at her—or _gazed_ , that was the right word.

“What!?”

“Such a focused worldview. You find duplicity more loathsome than anything else, and that is the only grounds on which you feel that you should judge.”

“Yeah, well, don’t get me wrong—sir—you’re twisted, but like an optical illusion or something, so twisted it’s confusing to look at. I don’t know why you’re worried about my judgement, though.” She returned the gaze, darkly. “Someday they’ll find out, and I won’t be a part of that reckoning.”

“Waxing prophetic doesn’t suit you very well, Yumi.”

“You think it’s prophecy? It’s a statement of fact, Dr. Lecter. The proud will fall.”

Then he smiled. “You’re deluding yourself. Violating your own precept. You want to believe that such an outcome is inevitable, so that you’re absolved of doing nothing to further it.”

“That doesn’t absolve me,” she shrugged. Her appetite had not returned, but her anger was only entertaining him, so she decided to deprive him of it and punctuated herself by plucking a shrimp from her heretofore neglected risotto, holding it between her teeth to pull the tail off and then rather indelicately eating it.

He watched her coolly. “Petulance suits you better than prophecy, but neither are very civilized.”

“…Civilized. You must like that word, civilized.”

“Why do you say so?”

“You’re both the antithesis and the epitome of civilization.”

“And now you are flattering me.” His head tilted again.

“See? You read that as flattery. An excess of pride, sir. Hubris.”

“You are a most uncivil sibyl.”

Despite the best intentions of impassivity, a snort of suppressed laughter broke out of her.

 

-

 

Yumi made it through dinner out of sheer spite, then begged the night off. Civilly, with none of the barbed remarks like _“I fear I won’t be good company”_ that she wanted to make, and out of civility he had to oblige.

But she slept badly, in an unaccustomed state of turmoil, trained and vetted vestiges of conscience finally pushed to the breaking point. She refused coffee in the morning.

Another day passed. She read, trying to keep her mind busy, and did exercises in place when that grew tiresome. The light through the windows changed and every second ticked away an unknown fraction of her remaining time.

Evening came again. And prepping fell to her, and she was chopping onions—too quickly.

Dr. Lecter kept his knives insanely sharp, and she was not the most dexterous person. It was surprising that she’d managed this long without such a mishap. She frowned for a moment at the blood oozing from her left middle finger, and looked for something to staunch it.

The onion was soiled—or perhaps not so much, in the chef’s estimation.

As she thought that, he turned, too smooth and quick. “You’ve cut yourself.”

He made it look like concern, but the way he said it—not a question, he didn’t need to ask, he didn’t even need to see, because he’d _scented_ it. And as he moved toward her the knife was in her hand again, raised against him.

“Don’t come near me.”

He did, one more step. “Put that down. You should let me see how bad it is.”

“I said stay _back!_ ” Her heart was pounding all the way up, and she was in combat mode, falling into stance even though a kitchen knife was not a sword. Trying to adjust for it, she sank, lowering her center of gravity.

“It’s not in your best interests to threaten me,” he said. “I am not a shark. But I will attack if provoked.”

She knew that she should have moved already if she was going to, or she should have let him get closer first; this was nothing but a display of her own terror, hardly a threat. But she was locked in it, unable to get out. Her sympathetic nervous system screamed at her to fight while tactics foresaw every possible move ending badly.

“Yumi. Put it down.” He made his voice ring with authority, drawing on all that power, telling her that this was the last chance to obey.

Fighting like this would not afford her the greatest odds. So with the order to follow, she took that as a way out, and set the knife down on the island counter, though that did nothing to get the adrenaline out of her blood. Which now was dripping on the floor. Maybe she should run for it. There was still a bit of daylight left…

“Good.” He stepped closer, holding out his hand. “Now, please let me see. I can make stitches if you need any.”

“Don’t touch me.” It only came out a whisper. She curled in around her bloodied hand, a pathetic wounded animal. “Please don’t touch me.”

“Then go to the sink, and rinse it off, and show me. I am not some wild beast to be sent into a frenzy. I will help you if you let me.”

“S- sorry, sir,” Yumi got herself to say, and put her hand under running water, and tried not to audibly gasp for panicked breath as he moved in close.

It was a great and terrible irony, a dizzying miracle of cognitive dissonance, that something in her wanted to be comforted by the very same presence which was the cause of all this unabated fear. And for the first time she was truly disgusted with herself for obeying, for failing to even try to take him down. Her mind served up waking nightmares.

She held the finger in question out to show. It still bled, but not gushing. Knowing that he looked at it, she had to look away.

“Not so bad. There is nothing for that but to make sure it’s clean. And remember to take your time. This is not a restaurant; there is no reason to rush with knives.” He placed a clean towel beside her. “Wash it with soap, and I will get you a bandage.”

“…Thank you,” she tried to say, but barely made a sound.

_Now,_ she thought as he left the kitchen. _Now. Run. Get out and run._

But she didn’t move, she wasn’t moving, she kept on choosing this nonaction because why? Respect? For this creature? Or the sudden shortfall of confidence in her abilities upon coming to a world with no magic?

Her hands moved as if apart from her to wash it like he said. It occurred to her that she need have few qualms about staining his towels: he would know how to take care of that. She was huddled on the floor when he returned.

“Yumi. Stand up.”

“I’m scared.” Denied the expression of its instinct, the raw jagged mess of terror had overwhelmed her. “I’m scared. I’m scared.”

“Are you having an anxiety episode? You weren’t scared before.”

Dr. Lecter was transformed again, into the psychiatrist, the warm and professional presence, and it turned to hissing sorcery in her brain.

“You—this—”

“Tell me.” He crouched down to be level with her. So helpful.

_He adores your fear; he leans in to smell it like a flower._ But she found herself obeying again, spitting it out, grated and halting, maybe in the slight strained hope that this too would entertain him enough to spare her.

“It won’t be pretty. That’s what I know now. You made it sound like—like it was just a search for this twisted beauty, some…dark aesthetic beyond the normal range of perception, that you knew no one else could see—but that’s not—not the drive—it’s the cruelty you love, deceit, chaos, outside and above every code, the power rush from breaking all possible laws, the fascination of agony, and I would be better off using one of those knives on myself because it will not be pretty, it will not—and I can’t believe I’m so, so useless, that I would rather let myself be so powerless—I—I’m scared, I hate myself for it.”

He stared at her for a long thoughtful moment. “I will not torture you.”

A coil in her began to ease, but that was foolishness. “You did. You are.”

“Not physically. That’s what you are afraid of?”

“How can I believe that? How can I believe anything? You know I hate betrayal, so you—you’ll earn my trust to break it.”

“I will not,” he repeated. “Torture reduces anyone to the same mass. Which is why, as you must know, enhanced interrogations do not yield the most reliable results. I have no more wish to damage you that way than I do to go to the Louvre and sand the details from the Winged Victory. Now, if you’re too nervous to move, let me take care of that. Please?”

It wasn’t an entreaty, but a calm and firm expectation. Wordlessly she unclenched her right hand from its pressure grip to hold out her left, shaking, wrapped in the towel. She was so hopeless.

“Speaking of museums, I could let you go to one tomorrow,” he told her as he worked.

She looked at him then, despite herself. “Really?”

“You must promise not to leave the premises until I come back for you.”

“…Yes, sir.”

“There. Have you started to feel better, or would you rather take a Valium?”

“A what?”

“Something for the anxiety. It will make you sleepy.”

“I… I would appreciate it if you refrained from pathologizing me,” she said, staring at the bandage, then the floor. “Anxiety means unfounded fear. It’s a little late to turn down the gaslights.”

He smiled and stood, offering a hand. “You must be feeling better. But you may be weak after the flush of epinephrine.”

She got up on her own, but she was indeed rather wobbly. He poured her something. Pineapple juice, from a glass bottle. “Sugar will help.”

“…Thank you.”

“Let me take care of dinner. Watch if you like, but I won’t have you handling any more sharp objects today.”

“Yes, sir.” She sat in one of the leather chairs, and forced herself to sip the juice although it was unpalatably sweet and she was queasy, drained of everything but a slimy film of self-loathing.

_Fuck it,_ she thought distinctly. _Fuck everything. I don’t want to die feeling like this._

 

-

 

“So then I was reading about bioaccumulation,” she rambled. “About how all the toxins get stuck in the apex predators, so it’s not healthy to eat very much…swordfish, was the example. Shouldn’t you be worried about mercury poisoning?”

“As in everything else, moderation is key.” He looked pointedly at her glass of Stag’s Leap, half full in the firelight.

“Don’t worry, I’m familiar with the concept. Getting drunk on wine gives me a headache, anyway. It has to be beer or cocktails for me. Well-crafted cocktails—I’m picky there.”

“And spirits?”

“Strong liquor should be reserved for particular circumstances. Like strong language.”

“A fair dictum.” He raised his glass subtly, smiling with his eyes, and she felt a frisson that seemed to start in her fingertips and settle at the base of her spine. Abstinence had pushed her tolerance down. She would not have another refill.

 

-

 

Ironically, her sleep was more sound. Even if nothing else came of it, a bit of catharsis served a purpose.

Before dawn she sat bolt upright. Having a bit of a wine headache, she took a Tylenol, but remained awake despite her best efforts.

A long hour or so went by and when she finally went downstairs he was already fully dressed. She tried not to be buzzing with anticipation of the thought which had wakened her so sharply. “Good morning.”

“How is your hand?”

“Oh.” Yumi held up her left hand as if the bandage had just appeared there. “All right. I think it’s closed over.”

And after a moment she added, “…I’m sorry. For losing it.”

“For threatening me? Are you that remorseful?”

“I…well, yes…” Suddenly all conviction failed her; she remembered the fear as if it were not her own, like something on TV, and gleaming beneath the surface of conscious thought was fear’s bright inverse. “I don’t know… I thought I should say so.”

“To expect you to feel remorse for your terror would be unfair,” said Dr. Lecter. “And you already apologized for your actions. What is it you feel remorseful for?”

She would have thought that the facades should not come off first thing in the morning. Nothing for it. Looking away with raised eyebrows, she said wryly, “Failure.”

“I did not see failure. You were frightened, and made an ill-considered move, but managed to stop yourself.”

“I think you know what I mean. The failure was in the lack of consideration. Even with a knife like that, I’m smaller, and the odds are against me if I relinquish the element of surprise. I should know better, and I’m embarrassed.”

“You are apologizing for failing to kill me?”

“I mean, you brought up this—” and she gestured with her left hand— “so I was apologizing to you again for the…commotion. I feel remorse for causing it in such a pathetic failure. And I thought of running when you left the room, but I failed to do that, too.”

“So you count it as a failure to protect yourself—a self-betrayal, one of your sins.”

“Maybe?” Yumi pushed her hair back. “…It’s kind of early for this.”

“Not for me,” he remarked, “as I have a nine-thirty appointment today. In that light, actually, you should get ready to go.”

“Huh?” For all that, she’d nearly forgotten. Or she had not quite believed he would really let her.

“You’ve lived in modern cities before. So you must be comfortable with navigating public transit.”

“Transit?” She definitely had not even dared to anticipate that. But she craved it, in all its noise and annoyances—the pulsing life of a city’s circulatory system, full of people who each are full of stories, which all intersect at _place_ , at the need to move from here to there. A city, a city!

“Yes—I don’t actually have the time to drive into D.C. and back, certainly not at this hour. I’ll take you to the nearest station. You’ll have to transfer twice before you get to the commuter rail, but the National Mall is a significant landmark and will be easy to find. There are several museums that you can wander at your leisure. I can trust you to be back at the station at…eight P.M.?”

“Wh— That’s— You said something about not leaving the premises—?”

“I said that before I had considered the commute.”

“But— That’s a lot of freedom!” Suspicion painfully punctured her anticipation and she pursed her lips. “Is this a trick? Are you making me more excited so that I let my guard down?”

“No. I simply trust you with the freedom. The way you light up at the prospect is free enough of guile.”

“So, you’re granting me more than I asked for because I will be appreciative and less likely to betray that trust.” She smiled cynically. “It’s not a trick, it’s a bribe.”

He never smirked, not quite; to be so openly self-satisfied would go against his code. But he had a similar expression, a small smile with a quirk of confidentiality. “Is it working?”

“Well…yes.”

 

-

 

She was set free with paper: money and maps, and a book for the trip though she doubted she would need the diversion. He’d circled the relevant stations for her, as if she embarked on a scavenger hunt.

She stood in line and stared at a menu board, having taken his recommendation: _“For the full commuting experience you might stop at that coffee bar first. It’s a large franchise and you will find the product mediocre at best, but you may as well take it in as a tourist in this world.”_

_“Are we not all tourists in this world?”_ had been her wry pseudo-philosophical reply, and he’d smiled without looking at her. She had not expected to elicit real mirth…

The sounds of people and transactions enveloped her; the familiar blast from an espresso machine steam-cleaned her thoughts. Yumi studied the pastry offerings.

The customer before her ordered such a complicated-sounding beverage that it made her want something simple. At her turn she asked for a plain “tall” coffee and a wild berry muffin, and gave her name, and put the coins she received as change into a receptacle for tips, as she had seen the others do. Then she had to wait for the coffee— _Yumi,_ they called it out, so that everyone in the place knew her name but none of them would care or ever see her again, and the randomness was so bracing—and wait again at a cram for the condiments to add milk and sugar; and it did indeed barely scrape the edge of mediocre but she revelled in its over-roasted imperfection, in the rushed scrawl of her name on the paper cup. The day was open.

 

-

 

Not unfamiliar with public transit, but not familiar with the Baltimore-Washington Metropolitan Area’s systems either, Yumi blocked human traffic while navigating and felt awkward and nervous, until she realized that out here she could be clumsy and clueless and annoying with no real consequences. She had no reason to fear anyone’s impatience or displeasure, any more than they had to fear hers. The train jolted, the rush hour crowds jostled; twenty passengers lost their balance and murmured apologies to their neighbors, and she was simply one of them.

Giddy with the undesigned happenstance of the world—or badly designed in the case of some of the signage; she went two stops the wrong way on one line—she arrived finally at the National Mall. She meandered in the park, greedily gulping the humid air of the capital’s oasis. A family asked her to take their picture. She obliged and it no longer seemed true that she was not supposed to be here.

Or it didn’t matter. Because here she was.

National Gallery, or Smithsonian Institute? Art or science?

Science first. She peered at ancient dragon bones and at their reflections in the wide eyes of shepherded elementary students.

Not dragons in this realm. Dinosaurs.

The art museum was a more muted atmosphere. She had lunch in the sculpture garden, and dazzled herself with paintings from across the vast spans of history. After a time all the information was overwhelming, and she sat on a bench amid the calm of low sounds mingling in the huge stone space. Echoes smoothed the hyperactive shriek of a child into a high bell chime. In the waning day Yumi watched the waves of patrons, their patterns and distinctions.

She felt the prickle of a stare, but it was only someone sketching the scene, with her in it. Art of people looking at people looking at art. She stifled laughter, trying not to disturb the drawing.

In the image on that sketchbook page, she would remain part of the rest of this world, an existence that however briefly brushed up against others. The museum closed. She walked to the end of the park and back in the dwindling light, grey sky captured in the reflecting pool. Another rush hour felt numinous with the dizzying array of humanity and all its interconnected paths.

A city at night was a thing of glittering wonder, too. Maybe she could ask another day. For now she would return to the den.

To her self-satisfaction, she made it back smoothly, and the platform clock at the destination showed 7:57.

Out on the concourse that finely suited figure was already waiting for her. She should read the move as possessive, but was it so much? It could just as easily be polite consideration.

“That’s very kind of you,” she remarked. “I anticipated having to look for your car.”

“Nicely calculated on your part,” he replied. “Did you enjoy the outing?”

“Very much. Thank you.” She smiled and fell in beside him.

“I am glad to see you,” he said after starting the car. Chamber music trilled softly from the stereo. “I wasn’t sure I would.”

“You didn’t quite trust me?”

She was surprised. Today he seemed to be quite open with the truth of the situation. Perhaps, after last night, he thought that was better somehow.

“I had doubts,” he admitted. “It must have crossed your mind as well, to run.”

“It must have, but I never gave it serious thought. You know I couldn’t have planned on it—all the black-ops, and my constitution still fails at deceit. I only wanted the day to myself. Why would I ruin it by agonizing more?”

“An odd sort of pragmatism. Temporary delight trumps the hardship of self-preservation?”

“Self-preservation can only be temporary, too.” She stared out the window at storefronts, bright colors floating by in the dark.

“You sound resigned.”

“ _You_ sound upset that I was able to spend a day actually outside, with my thoughts free,” she said, turning to him. “Were you hoping I would run, so you could give chase? And in fleeing only prove myself so ensnared by terror?”

For a moment he didn’t speak. A stop light limned him in red, recalling a dream image.

Then there was a small smile. “I see I should have trusted you better.”

The light turned green.


	6. Burn

They drove not back to his home, but instead stopped at his office. Until he explained that he wanted to close up shop, she did not notice the detour; it could hardly have been a mile from his house. He did not seem to expect her to wait in the car.

Inside, it did not look anything like she imagined an office would—a reddish imposing space, stacked high with books that put her in mind of a castle library, complete with a harpsichord, and a fire merrily burning in a hearth (that he had left unattended?). So this was the place where people paid him to interpret the tales they spun out. She might have expected as much from this doctor’s office.

In the meantime he engaged her in conversation about what works might have struck her fancy during the day. The conversation proved too engaging, and then they were sitting to continue it, in the chairs meant for patient and professional.

“But that’s exactly it!” Yumi gestured with excessive emphasis. “All of those things are based in a physical reality. Every intricacy of emotion and complexity of thought is just chemistry and electrical charges, and every nuanced sensibility that we’re supposed to consider so learned and erudite is no higher. You have to see, or at least understand the sense of sight, to enjoy art; you have to hear to know music; it’s all sensory, all nerves. It’s infuriating when people talk like that, _base_ pleasure, _vulgar_ desire, animalistic—that’s so—pathetically wrongheaded! Just some vapid grasp at superiority, and hypocritical at that. Why _degrade_ the capacities of this body we’re only granted for so long! Such brief candles, let us burn!”

As if to punctuate her, something popped in the hearth. Dr. Lecter glanced over to ensure that no carpets were catching fire, and then leaned toward her, drawn curiously in by her conviction.

“Hypocrisy it is,” he said. “But it’s not wrong to say animalistic. Those organic capacities were inherited from the animals, with the purpose of sustaining the species. Hunger and fear to keep us alive, lust to propagate. Humanity seeks to distance itself from death, degrading the fragile body as a source of misery and terror, and elevating the things for which our distant ancestors have little or no capacity.”

“Which is just a hollow lie. Hunger, what, that’s _elevated_ , I’ve seen you at your craft. And fear? Fear of repercussions is what keeps a society functioning. And lust, are you going to say art is never erotic? It’s _all_ elevated in human consciousness. There is nothing base. Oh, there’s ugliness and horror, but of course we need the counterparts to beauty and delight, and the capacity for those things is no lower. Even if you claim that _science_ is higher, because it’s a pure intellectual quest for understanding or whatever, the drive to that is still beauty and wonder, isn’t it, and the understanding is still just signals in the cortex like everything else.”

He was staring at her so closely, but at the moment that did nothing to unnerve her.

“But you say in human consciousness—is it craftsmanship, then, or deliberate action, the awareness of one’s own capacity, which lends significance? Is it the _cogito_? Are our efforts elevated because they’re human?”

“The _cogito_ is too solipsistic. I meant all that we are aware of should be equally elevated. Why do we have to distinguish, and rank, and say this is more significant than that, when there is joy? Part of the pleasure in a classic work of literature, certainly, is in the history and artistry, but what gets handed down is arbitrary, too, and why does that make it a higher pleasure than kissing?”

He tilted his head, amused. “Kisses are a better fate than wisdom?”

“That’s not yours,” she observed. “Who said that?”

“A modern poet, who used the typewriter to its fullest.”

She watched the smoothness of his motion as he uncrossed legs to stand and considered the library a moment, and then climbed up to the mezzanine to find a book. He returned to hand it to her, open to a certain page.

my blood approves,  
and kisses are a better fate  
than wisdom

“That’s stunning…” Her eyes widened as she devoured the poet’s exuberance for a minute or so. “But I still disagree. I’m saying that intellectual and physical pleasures are intertwined and should be considered equal, if not one and the same.”

“ ‘Wisdom’ being the vain conceit of those who would degrade kissing,” he replied. “I think you are on the same page.”

“But then, maybe the physical should have primacy, because it is so temporary. Art is long; words remain, music is notated and recorded. Science shifts in our knowing but endures eternal.” She stood, galvanized somehow. “But senses, emotions—all these prizes from the wars of prehistoric organisms—in the moment they have more significance.”

“What we feel with the greatest intensity, then, is the most precious? And those pleasures which are grounded in the body are the more intense because we are inescapably physical beings.”

“Yes!” she cried, her fingers tensed with fervor. “These nerve endings, these retinas, these—what’re they called, how you smell—”

“Olfactory receptors?”

“Yes, they sense _molecules_ and even that can be pleasant, you’d know even better—and then all this biochemistry and these flitting miniscule blips that give us things as huge as love, why do people look for anything higher? What can be higher than this solid truth of our existence!?”

Yumi felt a tight twinge in her throat and noticed that she was crying.

“Ha. Well. Now I’m overemoting.”

“No, you only illustrate your point,” he said warmly. “Intense experiences have their root in the physical world, and intense emotions have physical manifestations—all intertwined. Passion should move us to tears.”

She laughed at herself, or she smiled at him, she wasn’t sure. Maybe he smiled back, but she didn’t try to look clearly. Firelight refracted into bright spikes at the side of her watery vision.

He still shifted so easily in her perception. Dangerous, illusive creature, tiger of fearful symmetry.

She had the sense that he would have liked to go on watching her display of emotion. But out of courtesy he moved to busy himself with something on the desk, unnecessarily checking this and straightening that. She plucked a three-ply tissue from a box and tried not to make too much noise with it.

“It’s gotten late,” he said after a good few minutes. “But I’d drink to that thesis, if you would.”

“Um, I…” she stammered, stricken with self-consciousness, with the image of her inverted on his retinas. “I appreciate that, but… I don’t think my tolerance is what I’m used to it being.”

“Then I will pour conservatively,” he said, every inch the fine host, “unless you would prefer none at all.”

She should feel tired, having walked around all day and then getting worked up, but there was still energy in her. Reckless stuff, energy. “Well…I generally like a drink. After subjecting you to that screed it would be hypocritical of me to refuse. What were you going to pour?”

He made a pleased sort of blink, like a nod, and went to the liquor cabinet. “I thought brandy.”

“I don’t think I’ve ever had good brandy. —But is this an occasion for spirits?”

“Circumstance, you said, not occasion.”

The circumstance being that he approved of her “thesis,” apparently. No—he did not merely approve, he _felt_ it. He would drink to it as a toast with a kindred spirit.

Which she could not quite gainsay. But.

“What is it?”

Her thoughts had shown on her face again. She had to answer. “I don’t hold with a solipsistic application of that thesis, as you called it. Our capacities are what they are because humans are social creatures.”

“And humans are social creatures because that proved the best for survival. We are what we are because of death.”

“Are you immortal?” she challenged.

“Of course not.” He offered her a snifter, still empty. “Consciousness is inevitably isolated; yet most of the things we enjoy are better when shared.”

This was a space in which they were alike. It was not the only space there was. She would step out of it later.

“My point exactly,” she had to agree, and took the glass.

He murmured descriptions of the drink—mostly meaningless to her, though she meant to be interested—and poured her several milliliters. They took the seats closer to the hearth.

“Alcohol has a long history in being a uniquely human pleasure,” he remarked. “A product of craftsmanship, refined over many millennia, that we ingest for the specific way it tinkers with our delicate brain chemistry.”

He made it difficult, actually, not to like him. It was deliberate and yet no less genuine. She couldn’t help but smile and raise her glass. “Apropos of everything.”

He returned the gesture. They did not clink; it would have been too loud somehow. She sipped. The dark amber stuff was warm and biting, not entirely unlike whisky, but more fruited, dew-shine instead of smoke-veil. The garden’s brightness. Suited to the conversation, though not much to Dr. Lecter. The firelight somehow darkened him, and the shadows of the room, while it caught brilliant gold in the brandy and threw fey glimmers on the walls.

She felt like closing her eyes but did not. There was beauty to take in.

“Burn, burn, brief candle,” she said again, mostly to herself, but maybe for his benefit.

 

-

 

Her dreams were too vivid, hyperactive and oversaturated, and did not dissipate when she woke, staying in her mind like clinging mist. A winged sculpture, Eros or Nike, bleeding brandy. The office mezzanine tessellated into a labyrinthine library. A sense of urgency as she wandered through it in search of the typewriter poet’s work.

The urgency was for something else, because when she woke the book was there on the side table, where she’d left it the night before.

Dr. Lecter was kind enough to make her coffee at lunch time, since she had slept in. She might have made it herself, but she was not quite confident enough with the operation of the syphon brewer. She watched carefully.

“You seem pensive,” he remarked at her silence as she gripped the warmth of the coffee cup in both hands.

“I had strange dreams,” she murmured absently, and wished she hadn’t mentioned it.

“That is not suprising. Dreams are one way the brain parses its experiences, and yours took in a good deal yesterday.”

He did not ask, which she appreciated. There was nothing in particular to be shy about, but maybe she was still parsing the parsing, and wanted the privacy for it.

“There was art,” she agreed, enough truth for the moment. It was bright out today and the kitchen gleamed. He’d chosen a tie with sky-blue glints in it to match, though the suit he wore had more in common with the deep ocean.

Yumi thought of asking if she might go for a walk, but felt indolent at the same time, and the burst of activity on hard museum floors had left her feet sore anyway.

While she finished her coffee he put together tea sandwiches, lox and cress on pumpernickel; and he put on music, noticing that she was not talkative, but to her delight she recognized it. “Chopin!?”

“Yes,” he said, suprised for his part, since she had not previously evinced any knowledge in the subject. “You know it?”

“I don’t know very much, but I know this. And Debussy, and Ravel…”

“Romantic through and through,” he observed.

“So I’m always told.”

The rest of the day she only idled, following sunbeams from window to window like a cat.

He brought home live oysters and a quantity of crushed ice on which he had her set them. “I’ve been waiting for the market to get a good selection from New England,” he said. “The Chesapeake has a fair enough stock but I thought it better to have an east coast medley. Be careful to keep them in order, or we won’t know which is which.”

“Yes, sir.” She said it automatically, but the deferential began to feel off. That was probably a bad sign. There was safety in its distance. “…But I’m afraid I don’t know enough to appreciate the significance of their origins.”

“That is mostly for the sake of presentation.” Dr. Lecter began setting up utensils and ingredients. “It’s probably a more pure experience to lack that knowledge. Information leads to bias. A Massachusetts native would know more, but have more to insist upon.”

“Mass of what native?”

“The Commonwealth of Massachusetts. It’s a state to the north.”

“Is it a state or a commonwealth?”

“It’s one of the oldest states, so it’s called a commonwealth.”

“Massa…?”

“Massachusetts.”

Yumi pursed her lips to keep from laughing.

“You’ll have to avoid the place, if you can’t hear the name without laughing. The people are rather proud of their state.”

“But not of their commonwealth?” she barely managed before cracking up.

“You may not need it,” he said archly, “but I would like open wine to pair with these.”

He went to the wine pantry and returned with a Chablis, which he explained was said to pair the best with oysters because the soil that fed the grapes was rich with the remains of oyster shells. “The mineral qualities are an inheritance from the ones that lived hundreds of millions of years ago, and they complement the present.”

Fascination quelled her hilarity and her eyes widened. “That seems less like a pairing and more like…fate on a staggering scale.”

“An epoch scale?”

She pursed her lips again, uncertain which she found more annoying—that he’d mocked her awe with an abjectly terrible pun, or that she had not thought of it first. “May I set out some bread, then? If I drink without any starch I will indeed get extremely ridiculous.”

“Do. There should be a baguette, and apple butter in the refrigerator, if you like. I wouldn’t recommend oil; it will cling.”

She sliced the bread, and set it properly in a napkin-lined basket, with a fat slice of butter on the side.

He had rolled his sleeves up and removed the jacket for an apron, and switched on the Chopin again. She watched him take out two glasses and pour a bit of the Chablis, grace too controlled, and he brought the glass to his nose to test the bouquet, eyes closed and head moving so slightly in his singular focus on that sense.

She felt as if the air grew strange and heavy around her, closer, charged with something she forgot before waking. But he opened his eyes and invited her back into his perception. She had never left it, really.

He poured more into his own glass and held up the bottle. “Will you try it?”

“Oh— Thank you.”

The burble of liquid seemed loud over the light piano notes. “It feels like there ought to be a sense of reverence in drinking it, when the ancient quality of it has a significance like that,” she remarked, taking the glass by the stem, “but then that is just a bias created by information. Everything is made of stuff as old as the universe.”

“We are the universe contemplating itself.”

“Toasting itself.” She never had liked to drink without the social confirmation of it. Glasses met with a soft satisfying ring.

The bouquet was sweet and clean, shaded with petrichor, but when she sipped, it was more like biting an arrowhead, and she winced. “…A bit sharp.”

“The characteristic flinty note,” he said. “It can be harsh on its own, but tempers nicely with the brine; you will see. I don’t suppose you’ve shucked oysters before?”

“I have not.”

“It takes some finesse, but it’s not complicated.”

Finesse she lacked. She would rather have watched him do all of them, with the quick confidence of surgery-steady hands, but obviously he expected her to learn. “Always make sure the shell is closed first, or that it closes when you tap it. An open shell means the oyster is dead, and they are only safe to eat if they are alive.” He showed her the pried-open mollusk, angrily shrinking back. “See? Quite healthy.”

“I knew the point is that they’re raw, but are they alive when we eat them?”

“Technically. They have no central nervous system, so they feel nothing. And they can’t move; we sever the muscle to detach them from the shells. Like so.” He made an effortless scrape that she would scarcely be able to imitate. “Careful to hold the liquid in. The brine is half the flavor…”

He let her watch two more and then monitored her attempt, advising as she held the shell firm in a towel and set her jaw in concentration. Normally she would feel uneasy under such scrutiny, or bashful, but he was too adept at making his attention a warm and easy presence. At least in this. There was no sense that failure would result in disappointment or anger, so long as her efforts were focused and sincere.

Once she had it he busied himself improving the presentation, carving lemons into fancy shapes, whisking lemon juice and vinegar.

Knowing the things were still alive and would remain so gave a more violent tinge to all the prying and slicing, though it was a delicate act. Deliberation could compensate for a lack of finesse. Which meant it took her a couple of nocturnes, and she spilled much of the brine from one, but at last there were a dozen oysters glistening on the half-shell, all placed carefully back in order on their tray of ice.

“Not bad,” he said. “It would appear you’ve found the knack for it. Not even a broken shell.”

“Well, it must be the quality of the instruction.”

“That only goes so far.” He arranged lemon halves cut with tulip zigzags and a little cup of vinegar sauce.

“…Should I set the table?” she asked.

“No. It’s best to enjoy them immediately; I thought they could be taken as hors d’oeuvres.” He cleared the counter space to put down napkins and little plates and tiny forks to either side of the tray, and hung up the apron again.

“You needn’t stand on lack of ceremony for my sake.” She set the bread nearby.

He smiled unreservedly at the quip. She’d meant it to be clever but felt suddenly shy that he did in fact find it so. “The correct way of consuming raw oysters does not lend itself to much ceremony, pair it as we might with fine wine.” He named their origins, insisting that they be eaten in order, starting locally and traveling north.

The relative informality was pleasant, standing in the kitchen still lit mostly by the low silvery light of dusk, to inhale the shiny meat from their shells between sips of wine and bites of bread and bits of conversation. They tasted of the tide, sweet or stony by varying degree. It did indeed bring out more fruited layers to the Chablis, but Yumi saved a part of her presence of mind to devote to temperance.

There was hardly any point. No amount of sobriety would negate the things that her eyes took in, the waistcoat and shirtsleeves and poise of gestures, shoulders, cheekbones—the motion of eating which could not really be said to lack ceremony when he did it, which looked like nothing so much as a kiss.

They lingered over it a bit; he might have been waiting for her to finish her glass, but she wasn’t going to make it. Dusk fell to dark. He turned up the lights and she rather belatedly thanked him for the nice hors d’oeuvre. When he replied that he was glad to see her enjoy them, it was with a level of sincerity she had not expected, and she felt herself turn red and discombobulated. She smiled anyway.

It was still fairly early. Only now did he put the apron back on to start preparing something else. Nothing too involved tonight, then.

She cleaned up the oyster detritus, with a sort of mournful feeling carried by the minor key of a nocturne, an awareness of the brevity of moments.

He was not asking her to do anything. In fact, he seemed to be basically finished already, placing slices of ostensibly-beef into a glass bowl of liquid and fragrant things, and fitting a lid over it. A marinade.

Had she spaced out? Apparently it didn’t much faze her any more to be in the room at the same time, so long as she did not over-contemplate. This had simply become a facet of how things were. Maybe she did not mind the reminder that he took the _thesis_ to such dangerous unthinkable ends…

There was some sockeye salmon in the refrigerator as well, if she recalled correctly. Or was it halibut? She should be doing something with it in the meantime. Dr. Lecter had put away the Chablis and was decanting something red.

Usually there were procedures in place but she felt they had been disrupted somehow. Maybe she should ask to be excused for a bit. Indecisive, she busied herself with tidying things instead. One clarion note struck bold and familiar through the haze.

He sensed the way that she unthinkingly perked, and turned toward her, and then said nothing out of respect for another’s pure enjoyment of music. Her eyes were already half-closed. She smiled a little and leaned back against the counter as the piece moved into its lavish trills. This she knew he understood. It moved through her, it illuminated, it delineated something about the essence of whatever it was she lived to chase.

She did not think he was watching her; rather, he did the same to follow her into it, trying to see what she saw there. The last phrases ebbed into softness and faded.

“My favorite,” she said, completely unnecessarily. “That’s the reason I know Chopin.”

“The Fantaisie-Impromptu,” he replied in kind. “A bit extravagant; but it lives up to its name, after all. Published posthumously, against the composer’s will, but one of his most famous for the wildness of emotion in it.”

“I heard that it was inspired by the third movement of the Moonlight Sonata, but that never appealed to me as much. It has the wildness but the expression of it is still more technical-minded, or something.”

“The difference you hear might be that between a Classical-Romantic cusp and a pure Romantic.”

“That sounds too technical itself. I don’t really know enough to analyze it; I just like the one better.”

The sound system was quiet—that must have been the last track. Yumi was glad for the respite after its intensity. She noticed that he had hung up his apron again. So she did likewise.

“Would you like to hear something else?” he asked.

“Oh…not at the moment.”

The end of the record was not much of a blessing after all. She could hear the drumming of her heart.

She wanted to be standing closer to him. By the time she admitted the thought to herself her feet were already moving.


	7. Taste

Step, and slow step, his eyes on her curiously. He knew her, he could read her, the path of her intention plain. The question was whether she could really follow it. In her mind she saw herself walking up close enough to press in and grasp the collar of the dark blue shadow-plaid waistcoat with both hands. The picture terrified her and she stopped short. Closer than arm’s length but far.

Dr. Lecter waited for her to speak, watching her birdlike, and yet not without that warmth of presence. Both at once and shifting. She couldn’t look in his eyes.

“I’m…drawn to you,” she murmured finally. She had feared it would open up some terrible portal to give it the weight of words, but instead it felt like a confession that lifted a burden. Naming changed little; she had already been gazing into the abyss.

“I know,” he said. “It would be unfair of me to act on that.”

“Unfair?”

“There’s a power imbalance between us.”

“Yes, well, it’s started to feel wrong saying ‘sir,’ actually.”

“It still complicates your consent.”

At that she met his gaze. “It’s not— That’s patronizing. I’m pretty sure the point of my consent is that _I_ get to decide whether it’s valid. I don’t need your _noblesse oblige_ to—” Then she backed off, abashed. “Well—I didn’t consider whether that would make you uncomfortable. I… I’m sorry.”

“It does not,” he assured her. “You refuse to deny things. One can only admire you for that. But you are afraid of your attraction to me.”

“Or I’m just afraid of you.” She made herself look at him steadily. “Which only feeds it, fear being as…physically grounded as desire and… Can you hear this? My heart’s pounding so loud I can’t hear what I was going to say.”

“I can if you stand closer,” he said.

She moved near again. It felt even louder. Never mind the sound—he could probably scent the heat gathering between her legs.

“Closer…”

The anticipation of contact made her dizzier than wine. Her eyes picked out details to focus on, the small bright threads of paisley, the fine pale blue-grey stripes on the shirt collar. The strange slight curve of lips almost smiling. Small inches of heavy air separated her from him.

A subtle turn and tilt of the head, and he closed his eyes to listen. She made her breath, at least, slow and quiet.

“Does it sound like fear?” she whispered after a moment.

“It sounds like life.” He looked at her again, with affection, even.

Yumi shifted closer still, unsure whether to expect him to kiss her. The idea itself was too overwhelming.

He cupped the side of her jaw as if in prelude. Her breath caught, every nerve leaning into that touch.

“What do you want?” he asked.

“You don’t…have to… I mean, don’t tack it on to indulge me…”

Fingers stroked at the soft spot beneath her ear. She shivered.

“I don’t fake things. I am responding to you. Will you tell me what you want?”

“This…feels nice…”

He would appreciate that the easiest sort of caress like this could be so intense on receptive skin. There was only a raw and simple truth in how she melted to the warmth of his hand. 

His thumb brushed lightly across her barely-parted lips, testing, and she felt it in her pelvic floor, in the back of her solar plexus. He gave it to her again, smoothing over her mouth, catching and playing until she was kissing his fingertips, breath grown ragged. She never thought of moving but her hand was scrunched in the fabric of his sleeve when the end of her tongue shyly met the pad of his middle finger.

He made a small hitched sound, the first sign that anything was affecting him at all. All existence narrowed to it.

Those fingertips darted bit by bit between her lips, in and out and then to stay longer and—

She flinched and pushed his hand away. “You taste like _blood!_ Don’t just go putting somebody else’s blood in my mouth. I didn’t even know them…”

They both knew that she had tasted no such thing. In that moment she thought she did, but it was only a nick from the knife edge of fear in that intensity, a sudden nervous rejection. Of course he’d washed his hands properly.

But he calmly went to the sink to do so again, taking her words at face value. He scrubbed carefully, into each cuticle, and even the motion of that seemed erotic—though it was only a consideration, a signal of complete respect for her wishes.

She might have damaged the mood, but not killed it. She had taken the plunge into this space; she would not so easily resurface. Her body still demanded where the rest was. Should she say anything? Thank him for the gesture?

He dried his hands and saved her the trouble, with a sidelong glance. “Does that mean you would be willing to taste it, if it belonged to someone you knew?”

“What,” she breathed, not even managing a question mark.

“You know me.” He took a paring knife from the rack and neatly sliced open the end of his left middle finger, almost as if in penance for the cut she had given herself. Red welled there, flower-bright.

He faced her with his hand out palm-upward in invitation, an offer in absolute sincerity. Oath and sacrifice. The color on that fingertip seemed too vivid to be real, a lush violent scarlet amid the dark sea hues of his suit and the brushed aluminums of the kitchen. Her blood was sound and his was color.

Color and…taste? She knew it would taste of salt and metal. He stood perfectly still and waited for her to step toward him again. The drop grew heavy, trailing down the side of his finger. She could not let it fall. She caught his hand from beneath and it smeared onto her skin instead, cooled by the air.

There might be stains. He must have been prepared for that. She would not taste it from her own skin; she kissed the knuckle first, then up to the end, and he stroked to spread it on her lips like liquid rouge. And then she took him in, eyes closed, tongue dragging on the voluntary wound. A breath left him in a backwards gasp.

It filled her mouth with red, nature’s tooth and claw red, old older oldest hunger which she had not inherited, only imitated. But it was in her now. She had become this. Hunger and lust and fear.

She drank it like liquor. It was not at all like liquor; she felt odd and half-queasy but she still wanted. She bit down somewhat less than gently so more would flow and heard a soft “ah…”

It hurt, but it was not pain—something more beautiful and terrible through the core of her, an existential shock, a visceral collision with the sublime. Her limbs felt shy and feeble; she was losing her balance. He held her with his other hand warm and solid on the small of her back. There was space between their bodies still. Her eyes were tightly shut. She thought of opening them and couldn’t. His hand moved with slow firm deliberation up and down her spine, his breath quick.

“Take me,” he said then, low and dear, and gathered her to him. She felt hardness press against her belly and the finger between her lips press further in, for her to take the blood drying along it into sticky rust. She moaned high and desperate and licked at it as something with sharper teeth would. An answering sound escaped him.

At last her mouth pulled away, and she was gasping, and keening wordless, lost and primal. He touched her face and stroked her, soothed her, maybe murmuring her name, calling desire back into its focus. She was overcome, made timid with the force of it, with how the instinct of fear urged submission and the fury of craving was so strong it hardly knew what to demand any more.

She sucked the remainders of his offering from her lips and gingerly put her hands at his waist like an awkward dancer. He was gazing at her; she could hardly return the favor. She wanted to kiss him and was still afraid of it.

“How do you feel?” he asked, leaning close.

“Red,” she mumbled, and then, realizing that made very little sense, amended, “I want you. Hannibal.”

He smiled and bowed his head to kiss her neck. She bit her lip and clutched at him. He spoke next to her ear. “May I smell you?”

What? She thought the word, but she already knew. Not that she felt no embarrassment, but it was very much in keeping with this plane of their creation. Elevated animalistic. Her face burned and she accepted the heat as she whispered, “Yes…”

He sank to his knees before her—not a sight she would have thought to see, so she looked, his still-immaculate hair, crisply shirted shoulders, sharply hewn face rapt in concentration. He was beautiful. Slow and reverent, he unbuttoned, unzipped, pulled down. She closed her eyes again—it was too much to look at _herself_. Hands soft at her thighs, pushing gently apart, to the extent that was possible while her pants still hung from her knees. And moving up to the base of her pelvis, for thumbs to probe sweetly, exposing the folds of her, where she was as wet and slick as she had ever been. She twitched and hissed and had to restrain herself from bucking into his touch.

He never made a sound, but she could feel the warmth of his nearness in contrast to the cool air, and even the small rush of his breath was an exquisite torment on those concentrated nerves. Which he apparently decided was not enough, as something soft that could only be his tongue suddenly, terribly delicately grazed the center of her sensitivity. She cried out, her eyes flew open to look at nothing, she flailed stupidly to grip a counter edge. He repeated it with slightly more lingering pressure and she was gasping undone. For some reason then she looked down, which felt incredibly vain, to see him _taste_ her—and her eyes shut again to the sensation, and the undercurrent of terror rose high with it, feeding it.

Maybe he heard that in the tortured sound that escaped her gritted teeth, or felt it in the way she tensed. He stopped, pulling up her pants as he stood. “The kitchen is no place for this. Let me take you to bed.”

That was the general idea. What else could she have wanted? But it felt like looking down a ravine when she’d dared herself to jump. “Wait…”

Dazed and aching, she clutched weakly at the waistcoat.

“Catch your breath,” he said, holding on to her as if she were fragile and weightless.

She did and went for words to ground her. “I don’t think…it’s ever been like this… Most people, even if they’re enjoying it—most people really use sex as a means to something else… Distraction, dominance, connection. It’s so seldom just for its own sake.”

“Pure hedonism is rare. It should be celebrated.”

“Is that your intention?”

“Very much so.” He traced along her cheek with the back of his fingers. “…A better fate than wisdom.”

A beat or two went by.

She looked up at him. “Aren’t you supposed to kiss me after saying that?”

“Only at your invitation. Do you want me to?”

They hadn’t yet, it was strange to realize. Her voice came out too small when she said, “Yes…?”

“I can’t, Yumi, if you sound so uncertain.” A light touch smoothed the hair away from her brow. “You say you knew nothing like this; if you find there are boundaries we will step back from them.”

“I want to. I want you to.”

His head tilted. “Show me…”

So he waited for her to move, to edge in and lift a hand to his temple, nudging him toward her upturned face. Lips slightly parted, meeting.

He was warm and slow, too sweet, almost chaste. Treating her like something to be adored and not…devoured.

But savored.

His hand splayed at the base of her skull, pressing her to him, and he drew her hunger out and returned it heavy and heady. This vicious trickster mouth, all devoted to her ecstasy. It might consume her.

“I will be glad to do nothing but kiss you for as long as you can stand it,” he murmured against her ear, “but may we continue elsewhere?”

“What’s wrong with the kitchen,” she sighed.

“If you must know? I don’t like the lighting for this.”

She laughed. “What do you need to look at?”

“You, of course. I want to see you in your element.” He kissed at the corner of her jaw.

“The study, then. Start a fire.”

“That’s not quite right…”

With an arm around her waist he ushered her along into the next room, and turned the lights on appropriately low, and brought her to the table, just perching her on the edge. “The kitchen is where appetites are created; and this is where they are satisfied.”


	8. Symmetry

The indigo walls loomed like primeval night before fire was tamed. His hips pinned her against the edge of the table, his dark eyes taking her in.

“What are you going to do to me?”

Stroking her cheek, he replied in all earnest, “Absolutely nothing you do not want.”

Hannibal Lecter could lie, she knew, better than anyone she’d ever seen. He could put complete naked honesty into his gaze while pouring out falsehood fluid and poisonous as quicksilver. And yet she trusted him here, in the realm of sensory affairs. He would not violate it by violating _her_ aesthetic. However dark his ran.

She trusted him, but this was so twisted.

“Are you suggesting that we do it on your dining table?”

He leaned in, lips against her forehead, a gesture like tenderness that gave her a tremor of deep and terrible longing. “What do you want, Yumi?”

“Contact,” she breathed.

“You want to be touched…?” He clutched and pressed her to him, quite willing to please.

“Yes!”

She turned up to meet him in a kiss, and he gave her teeth this time, a nibble, a scrape on her upper lip. Too light to be frightening, innocent in sensation, and yet the hint was there, a bite…

But then he disengaged, and pushed gently away from her. She made a sound of dismay.

He was walking around to the long side of the table, to move chairs and decorations aside.

“Oh…” She could see the point: keeping to the middle of the table would make it less likely to tip over.

When he looked at her she went to join him without conscious decision, as if a current bore her, and he caught her up, brushing over her lips with that cut again, its thin and dangerous trickle promising that she would have him at her will. She sat on the edge and he gave her raw ardor, kissing scattered between heavy strokes of hands up and down her body, and moved in so that her legs parted to let him closer, to press his weight against her.

And didn’t she adore him for this, for the way he knew to set every nerve alight, purely in celebration of its existence? How could she not?

It went on until those nerves inexorably demanded more, and she was breathing _now, now please now,_ and he unbuttoned her shirt and set his hands on bare skin at last. She threw her head back with a deep exhalation. He sank in to kiss the exposed sharpness of larynx, the shadow of an animal move, and nuzzled, maybe smelling her, maybe testing the heat of her pulse…

“Do you want to be naked?” His hands were at her waistline.

“Ohyes,” was what left her, even though she felt shy, and that for her was an unusual thing, but she did want it.

And he removed everything, her shoes and socks—every motion so damned graceful, even at things which by all rights should look awkward!—and pants and all. He left the open shirt on her shoulders against the cool air, or as an element of design like Aphrodite’s pointless linens. Then he began on his own tie.

But she wanted to see him in that elegance, the aesthetic priorities that he wore so well—that, and she was not yet ready for the alternative, the shedding of humanity’s trappings. She plucked at his sleeve. “Keep it on…”

He looked at her as if he could see her reason and found it droll.

“Please?”

“The phrase ‘hot under the collar’ is quite literal,” he said. “I really must loosen mine.” He shook some slack into the knot of the tie and unfastened the first button or two of his shirt. Which made her want to do that, ironically…but not yet.

Then he walked away.

Automatically she frowned, but she heard the cabinet open and he returned almost immediately, with a napkin.

“Um…”

He put it down on the table with something of a flourish and took her into his arms again. “Otherwise you would be cold,” he murmured, “and…well.”

Illustrating the point, he reached down to skim fingertips over wet slick skin, over all those most demanding nerve endings. She shivered against him with a tiny noise.

There was a remark to be made about juices and flesh, she was sure it was sitting in his mind, unspoken because he deemed it uncouth. If he said it, it would scare her too much. Unsaid, it remained an unfinished thought, reabsorbed into the confused overloaded mechanisms of instinct, back from cortex to brain stem.

He cradled her head and leaned her back and back, and braced himself up on the table to so carefully lay her down, gazing close the whole while. It was a strange thrill, into her bones, how he did not shy away from a gaze returned as so many would. No—he smiled, welcoming her in. And fascinated she went, following the way the light seemed to vanish into his eyes.

Then concern came into his face. “This won’t do.”

“Hmm?”

He was drawing back to swiftly take off his tie and leave it on a chair back, and then his waistcoat, enough of a spectacle that she didn’t have much in the way of protest after all. “Your head,” he said, folding the garment up small, and he slid it under her as a pillow. “I won’t have you getting bruised again.”

The kindness embarrassed her—or it flattered, which embarrassed. “It’s fine now…”

“I’d like to be sure of that.”

But he was right, as he placed hands at her waist and brought them down over her hips, such teasing pressure, and her back arched, and the table was hard.

Those hands traveled to the tops of her thighs. She twisted and brought one leg up, freely parting for him, and she looked demurely away but she could feel the warm weight of his gaze… Arranged on his table, opened like Leda.

Touch, up to her ribs and chest and back down again, edging closer to her center and not quite there, until she was panting, writhing, desperate and adoring it.

She reached up for him. He obliged and leaned over to kiss her, teasing the shirt from her shoulders, tracing clavicle and sternum and lower. And drawing back to watch her expression, he brought fingers at last to that cluster of nerves which existed only for joy. It wouldn’t take much now. Her nails found purchase at the nape of his neck.

“Don’t tense so much,” he said, pushing down her straining hips. “You will force yourself over the edge too quickly. Relax everything.”

She tried, knowing he was right again—the human understanding that there was still more pleasure in delaying the gratification of instinct. And yet there was an unsettling thought, that maybe he knew her body better than she herself did, by whatever combination of his pursuits both professional and idle. Or it would be an unsettling thought, if she thought it; now it was only a flash of impression, no room for coherence. He moved fingers again and she failed, bucking toward him.

“Relax, Yumi…” He smoothed down her arching spine. “Concentrate on calming all your muscles. Hold yourself still and feel it. Wait and it will be all the more intense…”

He spoke as if to send her into a trance. Maybe it worked, a little bit. She focused on keeping the tension from legs and hips and back and it was just barely possible, but it was true, how it only drew out the excruciatingly sweet languor of the build those hands created. Such dangerous hands. Drifting over skin, slow spirals, manipulation too perfect. Digits sliding into her and out to play on the slippery center of sensitivity, starving incandescent delight.

“Relax,” he practically scolded her, when she forgot to again.

“I can’t,” she gasped.

“Yes, you can. It won’t leave you behind. Make your body calm. Trust me.”

He came down to kiss her again, testing, the only sort of cruelty she could ever find beautiful.

She did not beg him, not even for the sake of theater. But she waited, every breath a gasp, and he drew himself back to take in the sight and the teasing went slowly, slowly into a rhythm…

It was there and gone, nearly starting only to pull back again, her own body teasing her without the push of tensed up muscles. Over and over, and she kept herself still in its spell but her voice cried out, and at last it collided under his hands into brilliant focused intensity, the satisfaction of life’s exultant greed.

He coaxed the last sparks out of it, generous, until her breath slowed and she looked up at him with eyes half-lidded.

He rested on the table’s edge with a lingering gaze and a hand at ease on her hip. “How do you feel?”

“Drugged,” she murmured. “With oxytocin.”

“An erudite description.” There was his smile again, with a hint of self-congratulatory fondness in it, the vanity that no skilled sensualist can quite fend off in seeing the beneficiary of those skills gone dishrag-limp.

“I like to read. But…what about you?”

“I told you. What I wanted was to see you in your element. Or perceive, I should say. There were other senses involved.”

His perception held the entirety of her. She didn’t know if she had ever been seen so completely. Or _beheld_. Her gaze fell on the suprasternal notch, just revealed between unfastened buttons. She thought of pressing her lips there to breathe the scent of that sweat drying.

“Something to drink?” he said lightly.

It was a shared joke: the impeccable host speaking for all the world as if he did not have the guest sprawled naked and wet on his table and a discernible prominence in his pants. She smiled at the appeal to her sense of mischief. “Please.”

 

-

 

They sipped the Syrah he had decanted. Everything was rumpled, but he had the waistcoat back on, leaving the tie off and his collar undone, a deliberate flirtation. In kind she left her shirt mostly unbuttoned. She felt a strange attachment for him, something covetous but shy. She held her glass in both hands.

He lit a fire, now, in the parlor—the opulence of which room she found rather stuffy, but it made the atmosphere closer.

“What is it?” he said into her silence. “You look as though you want to ask something.”

“I… I wondered…what you saw, when you saw me in my element.”

“I saw what you invited me to see. The beauty of what you believe in.” He swirled his wine, dark rose edging up the side of the glass. “I particularly enjoyed the way the muscles across your belly spasmed with your climax.”

Her eyes widened, glance darting away and back, and she felt her face turn redder than the flush of sex.

“That’s very charming, your refusal to look away when you blush—but why are you embarrassed?”

“An…unexpectedly detailed account.”

“Is that all?”

“Well, I’m…not really sure how to think of you. Or how to address you now.”

“You did call me by my given name,” he pointed out.

Yumi remembered that; she remembered the texture of it on her lips. “But it doesn’t sound quite right in my head. Now I’m thinking of you by your full name. It’s beautiful, all together. Hannibal Lecter. It flows and then there’s a staccato…”

She was musing aloud, but he must have asked her to.

He tilted his head slightly. “You want to call me something with a pleasing sound, since I’ve pleased you?”

“Maybe I wish my perception could hold more of you at once. The way a name does.” She took a sip. The wine had the ripe feeling of peonies on a hot day.

He smiled. The world shivered. She wanted more of him. She was diving headfirst down a rabbit hole.

“Do you have a favorite piece of music?” she asked. “…Speaking of pleasing sound.”

“I do. And I will put it on, since I have heard your favorite. Let me get the record.”

He stood and set his glass down, carefully—maybe they were antiques?—and left for a few moments, returning with, indeed, a vinyl record. Everything antique. Though under the old world aesthetic was the older violence of the hunt, in bones and tusks and antlers.

He’d made the muscles across her belly clench and the soles of her feet tingle in a room of blue darkness and greenery. _In the forests of the night._

_Fearful symmetry._ It was an older poet’s work—she couldn’t place it. Which universe could she have read it in?

He opened a cabinet with a turntable, which she hadn’t even known was there. All the stereo components were well hidden in this room. He had equipment wired in every possible space, but he was less an audiophile than simply a lover of music itself.

“Bach’s _Goldberg Variations_ ,” he said, setting it up. “It may be a marked contrast to your preferences; the elegance is in what it does with pattern and form, the conceptual opposite of an impromptu.”

“Well, don’t _tell_ me I won’t like it. Then I’ll only be looking for what I don’t like.” The thought came out as a coquettish sort of scolding, not really the way she meant to speak. “Do you prefer pattern and form?”

“I find beauty in pattern. Nature adheres to it; we are all slight variations on a form genetically encoded.”

“What about entropy, and chaos, and chance?”

“The variables.” He took the record from the sleeve. “Variations continue to vary. This was composed with the harpsichord in mind, but there are more recordings of it performed on the piano. Which is the more modern instrument and the more versatile in many ways. A greater selection of arrangements, each with its own nuance.”

“That seems like you’re contradicting yourself, but it’s not contradictory, is it? Nothing exists without its counterpart. If there’s beauty in pattern, it’s the variables which allow us to notice it…and keep things interesting.”

He gave her a look of fond approval. “Something like that.”

From that she bashfully looked away. “…Isn’t that a harpsichord right there?”

“Yes. The weather has fluctuated too much lately and it needs tuning. Did you want me to play for you?”

Although there was none intended, she heard innuendo in the question, and shifted in her seat. “I…I’d feel like an intruder. That must be something else, to be able to perform your favorite thing yourself.”

“It is a particular sort of meditation,” he said. “Do you play any instruments, Yumi?”

“No. But we weren’t talking about me. Put the record on?”

“Do you hope that it will tell you something about me?” he teased. The beginning of the record hissed softly.

“It will. I won’t be able to understand it, though.”

She closed her eyes and the notes started, light and graceful. Civil. She tried to simply appreciate the sound without looking for anything in it. Soon she forgot the temptation to open her eyes and watch him listening.

“That was only the aria,” he said when the piece ended. “But what did you hear?”

“Serenity. And then something elegiac. But mostly serenity. It’s…calming.”

He hadn’t paused the record. She nearly jumped at the first variation. It was the complete opposite of calming. It was exuberant, no less than a party.

“True to the name _Variations_ ,” he said, a little amused. “It follows a bass line and a chord progression, but runs a gamut of emotions. It’s useful to have as a favorite; one can nearly always find a variation to suit the mood. I see a thought on your face, Yumi; what are you thinking?”

She was not inclined to say, but she did, as if it were the price of admission. “It shifts. Like you. It has its center and chooses what to be…”

There was a small smile. “You said you wouldn’t be able to understand it.”

“It’s only speculation, based on what I’ve already seen.”

Words dropped off in favor of the music, which danced brightly, untroubled.

“You’re waiting for it to change,” he noticed. “It would be quite long to listen to the entire work. I’ll skip to the twenty-fifth variation, which is said to be the most emotionally intense, almost a departure from the rest… You might hear something of the nocturne in it.”

Yumi cocked her head curiously as he put the record away and replaced it with a second from the same sleeve, and set down the needle in exactly the right groove with little effort. She wondered if his hands had ever trembled for anything.

It felt like a ritual, somehow, as she held on to her glass of wine and waited for the next inscrutable revelation, an Eleusinian endeavor.

The notes this time were haunting, and haunted, a sketch of unsettling dreams. It was longer than the other pieces but her attention never considered straying. Slow and complicated, disquieted beauty, and then it claimed momentum and tipped at last into a cascade.

He lifted the needle again and looked at her. For a moment she couldn’t meet his eyes.

“What did you see?” he said quietly.

“I’m not certain. Or…I can’t describe it yet.”

“But it did show you something.”

She sipped. “Something that wandered…and finally found its power in falling.”

“A submission to gravity, or a controlled descent?”

“Both, probably.” She kept herself from taking another drink. “I don’t want to impose a narrative. You put on that one because you thought I would like it, didn’t you?”

“I thought you would find it interesting.”

“…It is that.”

He was taking the record from the turntable, putting it away; she was watching the movement of his shoulders, the lines of his back. As if the physical demanded more attention after the psychological trip of the twenty-fifth variation, now she thought of him naked.

“Did it widen your perception?” he asked lightly.

“ _My_ perception doesn’t know where to start.”

Something rich and orchestral began playing softly. It didn’t start at the beginning, so it had to be the radio. He picked up his glass and sat beside her, farther away than she might have liked. She watched him test the bouquet again. To him it must have changed in the last twenty minutes or so. When he tipped the glass to his lips and drank she gave the same intensity of attention to those motions…

After another few phrases of ballet score or whatnot she set her own glass down on the console table at the back of the sofa and rose to stand over him. He looked up at her and the only discernible expression was curiosity.

“May I?” she asked, leaning in.

“I have been hoping you would take more liberties.” He put his glass down as well, opening his posture to be more inviting. The wine left his lips stained.

She straddled him, fidgeting with his collar, and then instead settled herself down with her legs across his lap, and unfastened another button of his shirt. “Usually I’m bolder. Or I think I am. But you make me shy. You have too much control.”

“Over myself, you mean, not over you.”

“Mostly. Maybe also me.”

“I think you’re managing well enough.”

Her hand cupped his jaw and she pressed herself closer, to the notch she had wanted to fall into. Desire was more bold than she felt. He wore only a subtle aftershave, and most of the scent she breathed in was him, just skin, sweat caught on a furred chest more traditionally masculine than men she’d been attracted to in the past.

“Taking liberties,” she echoed. “Doesn’t that mean something unwelcome?”

“You’re right.” His voice was sonorous this close. It vibrated in her skull. “Better to say I was hoping to see the bold streak in your nature reveal itself. The same unabashed greed that led you to enter this human race.”

“Is it a race? Do we run?”

“A race against time. To garner what we can in our numbered days.”

“One should find it unsettling that you intend such a morbid line to be flirtatious…but it’s not even actually morbid from you, is it.” She nuzzled up the side of his throat. Something about the structure of him there, beneath the jawline, had her quite entranced. It was probably a good week ago that she had first imagined feeling the skin there against her lips, and had not allowed herself to acknowledge the imagining.

“You have an uncommon insight.”

“Oh, I learned it a while back. Leaving off the ‘for tomorrow we die’ part renders the exhortation meaningless.”

The string section’s strains were too mournfully sweet. She didn’t look but it felt like he must have smiled a little.

“On that note…” she murmured next to his ear, and lowered to a whisper. “May I use…”

“Use me?” he said archly.

“The sound system.”

Then he turned to look at her, thin brows raised as if she’d made a joke. “If you wish.”

“Thanks.” She picked up her glass as she stood. He watched as she messed with the radio tuner, flipping through political commentary and country twangs and college football and censored hip-hop, oldies, new wave, stoner anthems on a student station. Then she found the same station she’d gotten in trouble for turning up before. She turned it up now. _Bomp bomp, chakachak. Bomp bomp, chakachak._

She leaned back against a table, smiling to herself in the sound, her head nodding a bit. The bass vibrated in her feet and the female vocalist chanted about the splendors of infatuation. _“My hips rocking as we keep lip locking, got the neighbors screaming even louder, louder…”_

“Must you?” he remarked. “I admit that movement of _Daphnis et Chloé_ is rather mellow, but I might have put on something like _Turandot_.”

“What’s the difference? Every opera you’ve ever heard is about the same thing.”

“Many, I will concede. I would still prefer them.”

“You said that I could use it.”

“I did not grant unilateral executive power.”

“Well, I shouldn’t go through your records, then.” Yumi obstinately sipped and closed her eyes. But when he stood to find another record she hit the add preset button. Let that stay there until he went through the trouble of changing the settings.

He did not get another record; he simply walked up to the tuner and pushed a few buttons, replacing the bomping with a cello concerto.

It was more stirring than the mellow symphony, catastrophically dramatic. She gave it a few bars before biting her lip and changing it back. _“That girl is a god damn problem.”_

He shifted like a panther twitching its tail, giving her a look that said the line between mischief and discourtesy was gossamer thin, and switched the tuner again.

Firmly on the side of mischief, she reached over slow and sly as if he would not notice the movement, and then quickly punched her preset and sidled herself in front of the equipment.

He was already standing quite close. He took the glass from her hand and set it aside, and leaned in, nearly kissing, nearly, infiltrating mischief with magnetism.

The song faded out and the DJ’s voice interrupted the space, yammering about a forthcoming album and suggesting that listeners would want to turn up the bass for the next track. Dr. Lecter promptly took the chance to switch it back to concerto.

“Oh, but you heard the lady,” said Yumi. “Turn up the bass.”

“Does that fall under ‘be merry’?” He indulged her after all and adjusted the amplifier. The double basses came out more strongly, but she unabashedly hit the tuner again. He must have been expecting she would. The electronic bass line reported in the floor. They drew closer again.

“In spirit. But it’s the sound, don’t you see? Or feel it, rather. The sound becomes a physical presence. It’s tangible.”

“The same reason the pipe organ is used in church services,” he said. The conversation was in close murmurs, more seduction than discussion. “A grand one can produce infrasound at the frequencies of thunder and earthquakes. Amplified in a cathedral’s vaults, it feels to the congregation like the presence of the Almighty. Physically striking the fear of God into their hearts. And in fact it sometimes contributes to churches collapsing. With decades or centuries of such resonance, less faithfully maintained structures can fall upon the faithful, the very act of worship bringing down their doom.”

“How delightfully allegorical.” She clutched at him, her nail snagging on the brocade back of the waistcoat. Too bad. “So patrons of concerts and nightclubs, then, are really seeking the divine? An acoustic theology?”

“Isn’t it a distinct possibility?” He kissed the hollow of her shoulder.

“Very. That reminds me, in fact, there was a club I went to that was actually called Church. And it’s true I only went when in need of spiritual cleansing… I think it’s closer, with that sort of music, how an artist has control over every last aspect of a digitally engineered sound, the same way angels wouldn’t be limited by form when they raise their voices.”

“You would breathe life into the banal blasphemy…of hiding in a transept during a cathedral service…and adding more physical sensation to that effected by the liturgical music.”

He was fantasizing about her. That shocked into her awareness, the present overlaid with that image in that mind, a euphoric enhanced reality. It tore off the last shreds of inhibition or patience. “Less sacred, more profane.”

“You railed against such dichotomies.”

“Take me to bed.”

“Yumi, don’t demand things.”

“Please…?”

Without so much as a glance at the controls he turned down the music, smoothly fading out, before switching it off. “Please, what?”

Her heart took the place of the bass, pulse pounding electric in her ears. Their foreheads touched. She stroked at his temple, trying to convey her urgency without quite making demands. “Please, let’s go to bed now. I’ll try not to yank any buttons off.”

“Yank and tear whatever you like. It will be worth the damage.”

And then he was whisking her upstairs; they were in his room in a blur of floating seconds; she hardly had space in her perception for its details but there was a suit of lacquered armor and the bedspread was blue like the wall of the dining room. She did not stop her hands from getting straight to work unfastening and shedding haberdashery. Sock garters, he wore god damn sock garters, that was going to be the thing that killed her sanity.

Seeing her blink, he took care of those himself, and she had that strange feeling again that time was not flowing properly, which did not really bother the perennial force of lust, as he braced one foot and then the other on the divan at the end of the bed, making his nakedness complete for her. He was more graceful in a way than full youth could be, with a confidence that came from being in one’s current shape and size for some decades, a patina over natural poise. Not all that much taller than her, simply imposing. Pelt and calm power, a build she couldn’t take in a fair fight, but hell if she wouldn’t take it another way.

She undid the remaining fastened buttons on her shirt and he turned to her and pushed it from her shoulders, gliding over her skin.

“What do you want?” she murmured.

“You beat me to the question.” His fingers traveled down her ribcage. “Show yourself first.”

Compared to him she was clumsy, her fingers stupid blunt objects, but he wanted to watch her anyway. She held his gaze as she stripped her lower half, though it messed with her balance to do so, and she used the divan as he had, then remained there more or less posing. When he stalked toward her with full intent, the crackle of fear was entirely subsumed in the surge of elation.

Arms twined around her from behind, hands cupping what curved on her. “Tell me…”

“Lay me down on your sheets and give yourself to me. …Oh, wow, no one should ever talk like that.”

“You should tell me what you want and feel no chagrin about it. I am glad that you said as much.” His breath rose the hairs on the back of her neck even though she was warm. “Do you want me to wear a condom?”

One balked here, usually, at the intrusion of practical concerns upon the image of romance or conquest. He made it so adroit, speaking so easily, that there was no intrusion. It was simply another consideration, an aspect of this physical reality, the capacity in which so many eons culminated.

“I’m sterile,” she replied, almost as easily, “so unless you…are afflicted by anything?”

“No, I’m not. And neither are you, I think?”

“Hey…is that why you…”

“Only in part. I also wanted to. There’s no need, then?”

“Not for that…” she sighed.

He turned her to him and kissed her. It felt like she would sink through the floor. Floating, too heavy. Why was gravity malfunctioning so badly?

They pulled one another toward the bed, loose and tidal. She touched only lightly, shoulders and waist and hip and spinal indentation, testing the texture of him, fingertips exploring while palms remained cautious. He would lean into her touch ever so slightly, so that she couldn’t be completely sure that he was doing so, but she wanted to feel it. And then he turned to fling back the covers. Silvery sheets invited.

First they were kneeling eye to eye atop the bed. He sought confirmation. “Yes?”

“Please,” she breathed and he caught her up to lay her down, slowly, down into the gleaming-fine cotton. It was probably dangerous to be gazing into his eyes so much. She had little inclination to do otherwise. He took her hand and kissed, lips brushing up her arm and moving closer, until at last the solidity of him pressed them together, all skin to skin. She let out a sigh, nearly grinning with the ecstasy—but ecstasy was the wrong word; she was more in herself than ever—to take leave of senses now would be a sin indeed, and impossible at that, with bright nerves singing _this! this! Yes, this!_

He knew it, he could feel the thoughts on her breath, and she felt the focus of his consciousness like the alignment of an astrological conjunction. Her knees opened wider for him. They moved against one another trying the tensile strength of anticipation. Her hands lost their shyness and reached down, and she felt his back arch, and he cradled her to him and made unintelligible whispers against her ear.

“Hmm?”

“Sorry, that was French. Take me.”

“That’s not my line?” she said, though it charmed her terribly, how he turned the cliché on its head, and not for the sake of doing so but simply because he meant it.

“It shouldn’t be. You’re the one who will take me in.”

“And how.” She arched toward him, clutching at his backside, languid impatience.

He rose from her a bit and stroked the outside of her hip, then coaxed one leg to stretch out again, and it became clear he was subtly arranging her in some particular way.

“What’s this? A favorite position?”

“It will increase stimulation for you…”

“Oh, stop it, that’s so clinical,” she complained. “I want to see you let go.”

He raised his brows too coolly, and then there was a tiny knowing smile as he took her chin in thumb and forefinger to command attention. “No, you don’t.”

No, she did not. Ecstasy was accurate after all. The sense she’d taken leave of was common sense, but it was always so flimsy and slow to catch up with her reality. So slow that he had to _remind_ her exactly what she was dealing with. And yet she wanted. She craved truth. “…Just a little?”

The smile turned fond again. He touched her face, cheekbone, lips, smoothed her hair back and kissed her jaw, and she rearranged herself again, open to take him, and he was already there, teasing her with the length of him. Until she gasped, “Now, let me have you now,” and he gave her another rough whisper of _take me_ and sank into her with a roll of hips, into her like venom and morphine.

She took him deep and still they twined and pressed themselves together as if nothing could be close enough. He had to brace himself up for her to breathe beneath his larger frame but she welcomed it, the broken gravity that had her happily pinned down and yet dizzy in space.

They moved slowly, building pressure, though it was already tense and heavy, and she found that he hissed in delight when she used her nails. She would leave marks. When her legs clenched hard around him he slid a hand between them to play on her swollen nub with his thumb, a maddening surfeit of sensation. She cried out and dug her nails into him harder, he gasped and stroked her, thrusting softly, a perfect vicious cycle that held her at the delirious edge, and over. He could feel it, he made a trembling sibilance—

And while the thrill of it was still in her systems he withdrew his hand and pushed himself closer in and she rose to meet him, no less greedy. He kissed beneath her ear, his breath fast on her, and then pressed a shoulder to her lips. “Bite.”

“Hard?”

“Draw blood.”

She didn’t even hesitate at all, testing with her teeth to find a spot, where there was enough flesh to take it and no chance she would grind against bone, and bit down. He took on a deeper rhythm. She pierced. The sound he made burned like something falling out of the sky.

Red was on her tongue again. His heartbeat drummed against her, religion older than pipe organs, older than words. A warm drop fell from his face to hers—sweat or tear, it might have been either. Another cry left him and one more muted into a hiss, and she answered as she felt the convulsion and release inside her…

When he sighed she let go. Her jaw ached from the effort. Their breathing calmed nearly in tandem. They did not pull apart, still content to mingle sweat and afterglow, dazed and touching lazily.

The mark from her teeth, turning livid, eventually caught her eye. “Is that okay?”

“Not if I don’t clean it.” Then he touched her cheek and parted from her, both wincing a bit at the movement in sated sensitive areas, and he left the bed. “Any bite that breaks the skin can introduce pathogens.”

“Pathogens, is the postcoital conversation topic,” she said dryly, and then sat up, seeing the scratches she’d made on his back. “What did I _do?_ It looks like you were attacked by a bobcat!”

“There may have been something with teeth and claws.” He padded to the bathroom.

Yumi blinked and looked at her fingernails. There was pink under the ends. She followed him.

He turned on the detachable shower head in the bathtub and began to wash his hands at the sink. “It will be a little while,” he said, seeing her in the mirror. “Go and get some more wine, if you like.”

“Don’t tell me you have to give yourself stitches?”

“Nothing so drastic. It’s scarcely bleeding now. It only needs washing.”

“Some of your back is in my nails.”

He looked at her. “Does it upset you?”

“I mauled you. I should help.”

“I enjoyed it. And I suppose you might, if you broke any skin where I can’t easily reach. You’ll find gauze and isopropyl in the cabinet there…”

There seemed to be quite a lot of medical supplies (and for what) but she found the things and washed her hands as well, for a good half-minute as he had. “I’m guessing this will sting,” she warned before applying alcohol-soaked gauze to the nastiest-looking scratches. They weren’t really all that deep. He never flinched.

“Thank you,” he said when she’d gone over them.

“You’re welcome. Why is the water on…?”

“Letting it run makes the fixture cleaner. The same for letting a minor puncture wound bleed for a few minutes…” Then he sat on the edge of the bathtub and held the shower head to his shoulder. Only a little bit of pink washed away and then it was clear. She sat beside him, and pumped soap into his hand when he asked, and held the shower head when he asked. It was difficult not to kiss the part beneath his jawline in the meantime.

After a few minutes he deemed it sufficiently cleaned, and rubbed antiseptic ointment on it.

“You won’t cover it?” she said.

“I will leave it to dry for now.” He put the things away and smoothed the hair she had finally managed to dishevel rather dramatically, and then she followed him in picking up clothes that had fallen in the bedroom. She did not put any on again. It seemed superfluous.

“Are you cold, Yumi?”

“No. I still feel warm. …And a little disoriented. This room is _very_ symmetrical.”

“You must be hungry, too. We were distracted from dinner.”

“I think I’m still distracted.” She insinuated herself into his space and went for that place under his jaw, lips on one side and fingertips cupping the other. Danger bubbled up into banter. “Or was I? You did get me to take a bite.”

He held her by the small of her back and murmured, “I am a little bit in love with you.”

“What?” She drew back, then laughed over her discomfiture. “Does that happen to you?”

“Not as you think of it. Which is why I said ‘a little bit.’ ”

She tilted her head. “Does it mean anything to you?”

His glance strayed from her in thought. She had caught him with a good question. Or at least one for which he didn’t have an answer he wanted to give.

“What does it mean for me, then?” she asked, more cautiously.

“I am less certain of that,” he admitted.

She sat on the bed with one knee up to her chest. “Well, I suppose it must mean something, if it makes you uncertain of anything.”

He gave her a mysterious look—maybe flirtatious? Too strange—and went to the chest of drawers in the corner. She watched him don a pair of pajama pants, feeling as if he was letting her see another layer that was the work of neither tailoring nor evolution.

One does not climb back up out of rabbit holes.

“Do you feel uncertain, Yumi?”

“No, I’m quite certain. I can’t destroy anything beautiful.”


	9. Choose

It was a late snack instead of dinner, Mediterranean styled. Bread and olives, caprese salad and anchovies with capers, which they took into the parlor to lounge over. The dining table probably still smelled like orgasm to him, Yumi thought. She sat in borrowed silk boxer-shorts and watched the hair falling in his eyes as Dr. Lecter switched on the classical station again.

Her thoughts drifted backwards. “Do churches really collapse all that often?” she wondered. “The structures made to house worship must have _some_ integrity.”

He smiled, rather brightly for the topic. “Not terribly often. But it’s the sort of event in history that would seldom go without a surviving record.”

“You sound like you know about all of them.”

“It is a pet interest of mine.”

“Church architecture, or the failure thereof?”

“The latter. You said yourself—delightfully allegorical.”

“There’s an allegory about you too, probably. Worship and collapse.” She speared an olive on a bamboo cocktail stick. “You speak a lot about God. Are you particularly faithful, or is He a philosophical construct?”

“Either God created us in His image, or we created Him in ours. Does it matter which?”

“Shouldn’t it? I’m given to understand those two views would be cosmologically incompatible.”

“Science, too, has its incompatible truths. Contradictory theories which describe plainly observable phenomena, yet impossible to reconcile.”

“Cosmological cognitive dissonance?”

“To us it must seem so. In a greater mind than ours, there would be no dissonance.”

Yumi tilted her head and gazed. He answered her question by seeming to evade it. Here and there she could catch his enigmata like a glimpse of lightning between clouds, stark and bright and dangerous.

After the refection and a few more sips of wine it had grown late. And cold. The weather had fluctuated again, down to an early freeze.

Beside him in bed, she found that her somewhat territorial habit of sleeping naked against sheets on which sex had occurred was not currently appropriate to the temperature in the room. They were not touching. Trying not to disturb the calm by shivering, she curled up smaller and smaller, and shivered anyway.

She felt him shift and brush her shoulder, and then he was enfolding her completely, chest to her back and arms around her, wrapping her in the warmth of his body. She went stiff at first, her eyes wide open in the dark. It shouldn’t have startled her. She knew that he was generous with contact. He was _good_ at it, always transferring calm energy; but that could so easily be weaponized, used to control, and she had known to shy away from it.

She didn’t now. No, it startled her because she felt nothing but deep contentment. She did not forget what he was but she uncurled herself against him, nestled, taking his hand in both of hers and playing with its lines and kissing fingertips, breath in her hair and heartbeat against her back, warm and safe.

 

-

 

The fragment of a dream woke her. Hannibal Lecter’s hand rested on her waist.

_Oh…we did that._

It looked like there was still some time before first light. The movement probably woke him when she sidled out of bed, but he didn’t stir. Yumi went to the guest room to use the bathroom in her space.

Soon she was cold again, but she stood blankly in front of the mirror, not feeling like going back to bed yet. She felt very strange. Not particularly uncomfortable, but diffused somehow, unspooled, and very much awake.

As she stood pointlessly shifting her weight on the cold tile floor something thin and warm trickled out of her, down her leg. It was him, she realized after a moment, the tangible remnant of the pleasure she’d taken from him.

She turned on the shower. It didn’t feel dirty—rather the contrary when it prompted the thought of that sweet violent clinging instant—but it was sort of messy and a bit bewildering, and she was cold after all.

Hot water sluiced down over her head and cleared it. In that relief she remembered the dream that woke her—it was a memory, actually, of her friend screaming at her when she had disobeyed orders to do something incredibly stupid and irritatingly heroic in a combat situation, _What the fuck are you doing!?!_

Good question.

She had no friends to yell at her here. Dreams were reminding her that they would if they could. Or she was yelling at herself.

This was too dangerous. But she had accepted that, normalized it, and decided that if her time had come, she would much rather go having taken all the beauty in reach.

That was all. He understood it. Maybe he even admired her for it. The unabashed greed.

Though at this point she might fall for him too. He would make it easy…

But no. Wait. No.

There was something she had forgotten.

The reality of danger crashed down on her again. Her thoughts spiraled in frustration, then hurt and fear.

She was uncertain now. There was plenty of uncertainty. She had no idea what to do with herself. She turned the shower off and donned a fluffy bathrobe and sat in the middle of the floor hugging her knees to her chest.

After some time there was a knock at the door. She had been more or less expecting it. “Yumi. Are you all right?”

It was a yes or no question and she couldn’t find anything to say.

“Please answer, or I will have to come in.”

“No!” she blurted.

“No, you are not all right; or no, I don’t have to come in?”

“Please leave me alone.”

“Do you want to be alone?”

Again she couldn’t answer.

“Yumi.” His voice came from a lower position. He must have sat down in front of the door, level with her despite the barrier. “Tell me.”

Warm and insistent. No, tender. Less professional, more personal. There was emotion in it, somehow more sincere for the fact that she could not see.

It made her angry. “What? You can’t already read what I’m feeling? You can’t _smell_ it?”

“You feel hurt and scared. I won’t presume to know exactly why.”

“You know everything!” Words poured out, unfiltered and accusatory. “You don’t fake things but you don’t feel because you feel, you shift into feeling for a purpose. There’s a motive.”

“No,” he said. “There was no motive but joy and instinct. You offered and I saw desire. You wanted and I gave.”

“That’s a lie!” Why the hell did this hurt? What exactly could she have expected? “It’s all on purpose! You’re going to make me fall in love with you—you want to see if I’ll _turn_ —!”

There was a pause, a swelling silence. It seemed longer as she held in a scream.

At last he spoke. “Your crown of flowers has no thorns. Your sword has no battles to fight. I am already myself.” A breath went by, though if he sighed she didn’t hear it. “You won’t fall in love here, Yumi. There is nothing to protect.”

The pressure dropped out of her. Maybe that was true. She had told him enough for him to see her patterns.

“But if you do,” he went on, “that too will spring from your own nature. I cannot make you love me and I will not try. I can only encourage your infatuation with me.”

“…Have you been?” she asked flatly.

“Only in that I did not actively discourage it. I would have had to be more cruel to do so, or discourteous. …And I have paid more attention to my hair since I noticed that your glance lingers when it’s styled. You may rightly accuse me of vanity.”

A wry moue tugged at her mouth. His vanity had little to do with her, and yet she was so easily affected, so stupid and greedy. “And oysters? They’re supposed to be aphrodisiac.”

“Anything can be aphrodisiac. I brought them because the market had them, not because of what popular lore has decided about the imagery.”

“And all our conversations? They were genuine?”

“I would be hurt if you didn’t think so.”

“I can’t hurt you,” she scoffed.

“You can a little bit.”

“Will you feel it if I do?”

“Yes.”

 _And then? Where does this go?_ Yumi thought. But she couldn’t say it.

Instead she asked one more question that had occurred to her. “And the cold? Did you leave the room freezing on purpose so that you could hold me?”

“That wasn’t deliberate; it was inconsiderate. I was born in a northern climate. The cold sometimes escapes my notice. I’ve built a fire now.”

“You assumed I’d come back to bed with you.”

“I hoped.”

If she didn’t reply, he probably would walk away. She stood and opened the door, and he was sitting there parallel to the frame, back at one side and feet at the other, having nearly imitated her pose without even seeing it. He looked haphazard and vulnerable, his head turned to gaze up at her with hopeful curiosity.

She hung up the robe and faced him naked again as he got to his feet.

“You must understand it’s very strange,” she said, “to be in your arms and feel safe.”

“But you won’t deny that feeling. And no matter how terrifying the possibilities that rise, you don’t reject them. That is why I won’t betray you.”

“Where I trust, you won’t betray. Outside of that, betrayal wouldn’t apply.” She moved closer to him, touching. “What did you feel when you gave yourself to me?”

“Adoration,” he whispered.

“What will you feel if I give myself to you?”

“Sorrow and glory.”

He bent down, and for an instant it seemed like he would kneel to her, but he caught her behind the knees to pick her up. She let herself go weak, sighing, and put her arms around his neck and hung on.

Maybe it would be better, since she was here—better to choose her end at the hand of someone who understood what it meant, who saw her so completely. As a gesture she pondered the possibility.

It was less terrifying than the other possibility, the _turn_.

That was not what scared her first. The danger she’d forgotten. She hadn’t mentioned it to him.

She still entertained the hope of extraction. But if she was falling in love, she was stuck here. It would chain her to this realm, and so long as she loved, no amount of sorcery would be able to get her out.

 

-

 

The morning was calm and cold. The chill prompted a physical closeness, open borders of personal space.

They both were hungry. Eggs beaten with cream and herbs poured into a pan with melted butter. 

Yumi monitored the brewing of coffee and lazily leafed through the _Washington Post_. Politics, money, politics, murder.

A body found two days ago, identified as one Eli Pendergast, who had been missing for nearly two weeks. Initially ruled suicide, now considered a homicide owing to unreleased details. The FBI showed interest in the investigation but declined to comment on whether it might be connected to the so-called Chesapeake Ripper cases.

“Hey, I think you made the paper.” She turned it so he could see, and studied his expression as he skimmed it.

He didn’t show much.

“Is that you?” she said, her elbows on the counter. “The Chesapeake Ripper?”

At this he smiled a little. “If I said no, would you believe me?”

“Probably not.” She looked at him standing there lifting the edges of an omelet. Her mind automatically tried to reconcile it and got stuck on the fact that under his shirt were the marks made by her teeth and nails.

She remembered waking in the night and feeling strange and then bad, but it seemed far away. Thoughts after three A.M. were simply not to be trusted. And yet they still ran in the back of her head, _What if I love him?_

Yes, well, what if she wanted to kiss him some more while he went off about some random bullshit like Pompeii or stellar evolution and it was kind of hard to tell the difference at this point.

She made toast and set the coffee in the dining room, and he brought the blueflower omelet, as he said the fragrant dish was called, the plates embellished with arabesques of frisée and long slender chives with their blossoms. Coffee centered her as usual.

He took care of most of the cleaning up, at which she began to protest, but he wouldn’t hear of it. “It would be uncouth now to leave the chores to you.”

“I wasn’t angling for a promotion,” she bristled. “I meant it should be equal. You did most of the cooking, too.”

“Your egalitarianism is appreciated, but I see you eyeing the coffee brewer. Finish the contents at your leisure before you clean it.”

“You’ve caught me out. I would protest at being spoiled except where fine coffee is involved.” She took a refill.

“I think I’m not so much spoiling you as ceding territory.”

“Ceding territory in your kitchen? This relationship _is_ moving quickly.”

It was an awkward remark to make. But he gave her a sly look. He caught the humor, such as it was—the absurdity of using conventional terms.

She hadn’t allowed herself to feel it in full before but there was a very distinct flutter, a frisson, that went through her when he gave some sign of appreciating her none-too-sharp wit. Well, she definitely had a crush on him. On a killer with a media nickname. Her coffee could have used some whiskey.

“I hardly know anything about you,” she complained aloud.

“I wouldn’t say that,” he replied. “But you haven’t asked many questions.”

“You gave an impression that you wouldn’t answer any.”

“Ask whatever you like. I will decide whether I’m inclined to answer.”

There were some questions that went too far down. She leaned back against the counter beside him and picked one near the surface of her mind. “What is it about those people? Do you know them? Or is it random?”

Strange how a question about murder seemed less taboo than one about, say, where he grew up. But she wouldn’t understand anyway; she had no childhood of her own as reference. And she had spent time in a subculture where people did not discuss their pasts. So she confined to the present.

“You mean, how do I choose.” He glanced at her sidelong from over the sink. “You’ve already sensed it.”

She sipped coffee and pondered. “People who offend you in some way…? They’re stupid, or boring, or…”

“Rude.” He rinsed the santoku that had been chopping chives into tiny green slivers.

“Well, that doesn’t seem especially fair. Don’t people have different standards of what courtesy is?”

“There is plenty of utter thoughtlessness and genuine disrespect in the world,” he said. “That shows despite differing standards of behavior.”

“Is it a capital offense?”

“It is offensive.” He looked straight at her. “Haven’t you ever truly wanted to kill anyone, Yumi?”

She pursed her lips, giving the question due consideration.

But his attention pinged her radar—she got the feeling that this was a significant bit of story to him. Maybe it was only a toll for the answer he’d given her. If it was something he wanted, though, she might be able to get something more for it.

“I can think of an occasion or two,” she said. “But that seems like a tale for a fireside chat.”

“Well. If you insist.” He dried off, maybe smiling a little indulgently.

He’d noticed how her radar pinged. Damn. She actually didn’t feel like going into it over coffee, but she also wanted the time to figure out what advantage she might realistically finagle from it. Now he would see her thinking about it and block whatever move she tried to make. The coffee was gone, anyway. She rinsed out her cup and put it in the dishwasher.

It wasn’t like she could be particularly manipulative in the first place. …Or maybe she could have been, but now there was sex involved, which if anything tended to make her even more honest. Might as well try pushing her luck instead. “Where’s my gun, by the way?”

“It’s in the basement.”

“Just…there?”

“Don’t go to the basement.”

She made a wry sideways nod. One had to take that at face value.

“Is there some reason you want it back now?” he said.

“Mostly I just remembered it existed.” She began dismantling the syphon brewer.

“What else have you forgotten?”

“Not much, I don’t think. I guess it would be more correct to say it occurred to me.”

“Why?”

“Because it’s mine.” That hardly followed as an answer, but the question, she thought, was mostly rhetorical.

He moved into her space again, an entirely natural proximity, and she reciprocated unthinking, leaning into his. And she was throwing out the coffee grounds, cleaning the parts, but even this light and easy near-contact grew distracting. She gave up and put it down, someone turned, lips brushed over lips again and again, not quite kissing, until somehow he had her pressed back against the wall, still eager for the textures of him and—this was not a wall, it was the refrigerator.

A little weird. A little delirious.

He hadn’t shaved yet. The texture was rather harsh. She flinched.

He pulled back and smiled, sheepish. “I should have recalled that you’re sensitive. I must feel like a thicket of nettles.”

“Well, I have coffee breath.”

“So do I.”

She stroked at his face, idle sensuous curiosity, catching stubble lightly under her thumbnail.

He watched her with amusement. “You might help with that…”

“What? Oh…” She looked up into his eyes again, more serious. “But I’ve never tried—I don’t think my hands are steady enough…”

“I trust your hands.” He took the one at his face and kissed her fingertips.

“I’m…not convinced that’s wise.”

He gazed at her, and there _was_ love in it—what love? What adoration? How deeply did the image of her burn in him?

But all that she could say was a timid “What?”

“We are told the body is a temple, but seldom does one see such reverence.”

She didn’t know how to reply. He understood what she believed… His mouth counted blessings on her fingers and then took one in, just barely, delicately, lids lowered, soft hint of tongue on her—how did that go all the way through her?

It was reversed from last night; she thought suddenly of pink under her nails. She was holding her breath. She let it out in a sigh. He looked at her with a question.

 

-

 

“I think you are trying to make me love you,” she said with the straight razor in her hand. Halogen light shone on the blade he’d stropped. “Treat me nice after sex, make yourself vulnerable. You know that’s all it takes. Dopamine and pathos.”

“I am not. I’m following the paths you point me to. I won’t swerve to avoid your feelings; that would be disingenuous.”

“How is this not disingenuous? You’re mocking me with the dilemma. Every second the choice presents itself, the moments stretch out into those quantum theories; but you know I won’t. You _know_ it.”

“I’m not mocking you.” All in lather, he gave her that earnest look. “I believe, but I can’t know.”

“Well, then your God is mocking me.”

“He’s taking bets.”

She raised her eyebrows at the callback. He straightened, waiting. “Don’t talk,” she said, and bit her lips, then circled her shoulders and took a slow breath and found the quiet of concentration. Her hands were steadier than she thought, after all. The blade rasped.

Then she could scarcely even feel the dilemma. She was too focused on not causing unintentional damage. It was a high-risk aesthetic endeavor; it demanded all her attention to topography, to pressure and angle, to beauty.

He seemed to go hazy when she touched to gauge her work, and once she had finished above his jawline he tipped his head back to give her his throat and silently sighed, lips parted, too goddamn libertine. Her concentration broke like wet paper.

“Dr. Lecter, I am beginning to think you need a safe word.”


	10. Sin

They held back from satisfaction. He had only two appointments, and then he was shopping; and in the meantime Yumi tried to think but failed and lay in the guest room reading this or that. It was hard to tell what her moves were any more. The board wasn’t flat, it was warped like space-time, and she was spiraling into the well of his gravity.

Dinner proceeded more or less as usual, though she had dropped the deferential attitude, producing halibut with tomato chutney and roasted leeks. He took a very small portion but lightly complimented it; she kept out of the way and tidied while he arranged more leeks on his plate with the marinated whatever he’d put in yesterday… And then the kitchen turned lusciously fragrant as he prepared dessert, a poppyseed spice cake with cardamom crème anglaise, garnished with lotus root chips and poached quince with star anise. She wondered if the latter was for her name. Strong honey-sweet wine accompanied it, from a bottle labeled _Tokaji Aszú_ in red letters. When she thanked him for the treat he made a remark about crème anglaise with such perfect nonchalance that she couldn’t even blush, only stare agape.

The table ornament was a riot of lotus seed cups and opened pomegranates, red poppies and the stiletto leaves of a palm frond. It all meant something; she was too close to see it. The color spilled onto his tie, a striking silver thing with crimson paisley shapes like forbidden fruit.

She liked the wine. He teased her when she asked for a refill as they cleared plates, mentioning her previous statement that too much wine would give her a headache.

“I’ve never had this kind, so I’ll have to find out,” she persisted.

“I would hate to be guilty of discouraging either the whims of indulgence or the spirit of scientific inquiry, but I fear we will both be disappointed if you find yourself with a headache later.”

And that for some reason made her turn red. She set her glass aside.

Somehow it was harder to relax those physical boundaries when he was fully dressed again, with a jacket and all; but she defied the feeling and moved closer, her knuckles brushing where he’d given her that delicate task, where she’d inevitably nicked his chin a bit. The tie kept drawing her glance. Maybe he meant it to accentuate that.

Maybe he wore its crimson patterns there with a hint at another possibility—the alternate timeline in which she’d grabbed his hair and sliced hard across, kicked him into the bathtub in case he thought to retaliate in his last moments, spattering red on the pale grey marble.

In this reality she had held the flat of the blade to his windpipe, wondering if there would be any reaction at all, and for the trouble she received an unflinching gaze of fascinated curiosity, or something, anticipation and affection. It made her lean in to kiss him softly with the razor still there and toy with him (tormenting herself in doing so) until he begged her to either take him or stop. Begged her, and called her _belle dame sans merci_.

(“What’s that mean?” “It means I am your captive.”)

But he could probably shift in and out of lust as easily as anything else. Otherwise he shouldn’t have been able to go out in public, the way she’d left him. He never lost control.

He smiled at her now. She felt drunk but it wasn’t entirely wine.

“Yumi, will you let me take you to my office?” he said.

She cocked her head. “Any particular reason?”

“It seemed to me, the other night, that you spoke a little more freely there. Perhaps it is the expanse of the room, or the fact that I had it designed for precisely that purpose. But I’d like to hear you there again…”

The domain of his profession, where patients spoke freely and he picked carefully at the minds behind the words. If that was where he meant her to answer that question she’d deferred, she should be very much on her guard. _Like that’s anything new,_ she told herself petulantly, feeling contrarily mischievous. “If you’re hoping for me to speak more freely, we should bring the wine,” she said with a bit of Dionysian coquetry.

Dr. Lecter gave her a tilt of his head in kind. “I can’t fault the logic of your whims.”

The wine was sealed with a stopper and packed in an insulating bag. It was only a few minutes’ drive, filled by a few minutes of Stravinsky. He might easily walk to work if he liked, but she doubted he was the sort to take the time, even in fine weather. With the bottle in its bag snug beside her, she closed her eyes, listening not to the music but to the soft panther rumble of the engine.

Before she took the razor to him he had let her watch him in the shower, water shining over tone, her mark still violent indigo on his shoulder.

In the great library-fortress of the office, she poured, while he tended the hearth and told her of the volcanic soil in Tokaj. This time they were drinking ancient fire.

“Just as the floods and fires of our pasts linger in our composition,” he said, and brought up the question.

Yumi sat up hard, trying to tell the craving in her nerves to hold on just a damn minute.

_The danger isn’t gone. Shift to match him. Or I’ll sink in._

She stood to move the flow of her thoughts. “I have my code but I’m not that complicated. When I feel the urge to destroy the reasons are pretty standard, I think. But I can only recall one instance in which I really wanted to and concurrently had the _capacity_ to do so. It does leave traces, when you feel something like that and make yourself hold it in. I can still feel it when I remember. The rage that seized down my spine. Something gritty and acrid like gunpowder.”

“You held it in,” he repeated. “Why? Because it wasn’t an order for which you could shift the responsibility?”

“Because she was a comrade.”

“Do you regret not allowing yourself to give in to that urge?”

“I can’t really. Satisfying my anger wouldn’t have been worth the cost.”

“But that anger has stayed in you. Did you think of killing your comrade after that?”

“No. No, I just remember how it felt to come close.”

“Have you forgiven her?”

She made a small laugh. “I don’t think I do a lot of forgiving. Maybe because after forgiving comes forgetting, and I don’t like forgetting.”

“What did she do, that you feel you must remember?”

“Well, that’s something of a long story. Which I mostly omitted before, because there’s trauma that isn’t mine to tell, and it didn’t feel right.”

“Yet you claimed stewardship there,” he observed. “The will to protect is possessive. And what we take, we allow into us.”

“You’re saying it _is_ mine because it affected me?” She blinked. “What if I still feel like I shouldn’t talk about it?”

“Insofar as it’s become part of your composition, it belongs to you.”

So easily he persuaded, giving her the truths on which she should operate. This was still his space.

“I guess I didn’t learn it personally from the concerned party in the first place,” she ceded.

“Tell me how this led to the end of your sword.”

She paced slowly. “I mentioned the internal turmoil from before my time. Well, when the others captured the heir after he betrayed them like that, they weren’t happy. A bunch of them made up some intelligence pretense and tortured him. One of my seniors was telling me the backstory; I didn’t ask who was involved because if I knew, I would want to hurt them, and it’d get me in trouble. I’d seen him wake up from nightmares.”

Dr. Lecter listened quietly through the pause. She wanted a sip of wine but she wouldn’t taste it with the brimstone fumes of old anger in her mouth.

“So when the internal turmoil came back around my comrades took him hostage again. They thought he knew more than he was telling—well they knew he did, he always did. I heard them talking. And this—she was a hard one, ex-mercenary, maybe she even liked the work. And she joked about it, she said ‘enhanced interrogation techniques’ like it was _funny_ and they laughed and—I could feel the blood leave my face, that was what I felt. The circuits tripped before I even registered it as emotion. My hands were numb, I couldn’t remember the decision to move, but I had her against the wall with my sword at her throat. I shouldn’t even have been able to do that—she was flawless in martial arts—but I was so furious it made me faster than her.”

“It fascinates you, doesn’t it?”

She blinked at him, recalled suddenly to the present. “Huh?”

“You’re entranced by how your sympathetic nervous system reacted first, spurred into fight-or-flight only by the will to protect and avenge. How emotion can have such an immediate physical manifestation. The memory stays with you not because of a grudge, but because it is precious. You take those animal moments as proof of the humanity you chose—your existence as a being at once both psyche and body.”

“Well.” She rubbed the back of her neck. “I suppose that makes sense. But I didn’t obey the impulse.”

“And what stayed your hand in that moment? Was it the fear of retribution?”

“It was surprise, actually. It didn’t even cross my mind to have her suffer, which would’ve been more fair—I just wanted to smite, I wanted to take away her existence then and there. The force of that anger startled me. There was an instant, I guess, when I saw what you just described, shocked with how immediate it was…and _then_ I realized what I’d nearly done. But I still wanted to, I must’ve looked like I would, because then our commander came up and pistol-whipped me and took my sword, so. That was that.”

He tilted his head slightly and said after a moment, “You have killed when you had no desire to, and held back when you had the desire and opportunity.”

“Sounds hypocritical, doesn’t it?” She rested her elbows on the back of the chair, staring into the fire. “For all the effort I put into avoiding that sin.”

“Do you feel that you’ve sinned?”

“Of course. The acts I did commit are the greater sins. ‘I was just doing what they told me’ is much nastier than a crime of passion, isn’t it.” She turned to him. “Do you do it in anger?”

“No.”

She waited for him to say more. He did not.

“But they offend you,” she pushed. “What did Eli Pendergast do?”

“I saw him on two occasions harassing the employees at a fine department store, knowing full well that they work on commission and would endure a great deal before asking him to leave.”

“Huh. Doesn’t that make you a vigilante?”

“It makes me a picky eater.”

He spoke so matter-of-factly that for a dissonant instant it was a non sequitur. Yumi felt the strength go out of her legs before she understood why.

“Did you forget?” he said, almost amused.

“No… I compartmentalized.” Gripping the back of the chair, she took a shaky breath. “You hadn’t…in so many words before…”

“Please sit. You’re pale.”

“Did you expect me to laugh?”

“Not quite.” He looked away.

But she would not expect him to apologize for frightening her, either. That would be tantamount to an apology for being what he was.

She was here; there was nothing for it.

After a bit she picked up her glass and sipped. It tasted inappropriately decadent.

“Are you putting it back in its compartment?” he asked.

“No. It was falling out anyway. I’ll have to make a better space for it.” She looked at the light in the wine. “I can watch the fear alchemize into beauty, but I can’t constantly hold it in my awareness. I mean. Ask not for whom the oven dings. —That wasn’t actually a joke. Stop laughing.”

“Forgive me. It was cleverly expressed.”

“Are you sorry?”

“I am; I don’t wish to be disrespectful of your emotions.” He sounded sincere enough. “Or the resilience with which you hold them.”

“It feels…less like resilience and more like being callous,” she said slowly. “After all, I don’t regret the times that _I_ killed. Even though that wasn’t what I wanted to be.”

“You lament the lives you took, the ugliness and impersonality of those acts. If you were callous, you would feel nothing at all. Regret is too often no more than needless self-flagellation.” He shifted his legs. “You may have grown in directions you did not anticipate, Yumi, but it has not made you callous in the least.”

“Oh, there you go again.” She finished her glass and set it down.

He gave her a magnetic look. “It’s not flattery.”

“I know.”

Soon she fell in closer. At the slightest gesture of invitation she was standing before him, and then his hands softly caught her up. Chemistry dismantled conflict. What she wanted to be was this, pliant and aching and sweet with wine.

“How does that make you feel?” It was a low growl against her, a professional question turned very unprofessional.

“Hey, don’t make it weird.”

“I am weird.”

“This is blatantly transparent, you know. I think about killing and you reward me with sex? I’ve seen that movie.”

“I would be wary of using such conditioning on you. I might find a mantis in my bed.”

“Then what _are_ you doing?”

“The same as you. Obeying desire.”

“Did that turn you on? You’re not _that_ weird, are you?”

“No. It’s you.” He kissed the inside of her wrist. “Your amoral honesty. Your gestures that gain certainty after you begin them. You have me in the spell of your cosmology.”

“What does that even _mean_.” She touched his face and her thumb grazed at his mouth, that strange warm bow, the attraction to which was only growing in her with no sign of abating. Her back was to the fireplace as she leaned over him. He must be able to smell the sweat under her shirt. She removed the latter.

He smiled at her impropriety and helped divest her of pants. The fire burned high and warmed her naked skin where the blood already rushed. All was heat and unsteady light like a fever dream. He stroked over her hips, ever closer to her center and missing it, teasing attraction into urgency, and kissing where she offered a surface, hands, breasts, midriff. A drop of sweat fell from her temple to the grey wool shoulder of his suit.

“Aren’t you hot?” she murmured, poking at the knot of the vivid tie.

Without answering in words he stood, and beckoned her back, clear to the other side of the room. The statue of a belling stag winked at her in the leaping firelight. He reclined himself on the chaise longue, height uncoiled, languidly provocative as a pin-up. “You’re right; this will be more comfortable.”

She gawped like an idiot until she had to stifle a sneeze at the change in temperature.

Smiling, he held out a hand for her, as if to lead her into something. Why did this make her shy now? What was he, to always disarm her so?

She moved in close. He reached up to cup her face, and there was nothing much to care about but the touch of his hand and her gaze on him that he returned.

The touch moved slowly down her body, down under her thigh, urging her to prop one foot up on the edge of the slate blue upholstery and open herself for him. He looked up for her permission. She angled herself closer toward him, losing focus…

She half-remembered to be scared and then couldn’t. The heat in the room collapsed into points, into dense concentration of nerves, where his lips brushed her needy skin in too-light kisses, where his clutching fingers pressed into the flesh of her upper thigh, where he gently sucked just above the sensitive part, where finally his tongue went molten and slow on her. Sighs turned to pleading moans.

“Don’t tense,” he told her, as if it were a witty remark. “Your leg will cramp.”

He was right; and she wouldn’t come standing like this, at least not for a long while. This was payback. He went on, soft, hot and terribly soft, and she could only gasp and grab at his shoulder for balance. Between the red and silver curtains their joined shadow flickered on the drawn window shade.

 

-

 

They kept one another on the edge for long wicked hours.

Back in his bedroom he surrounded them in fire, hearth and candles, driving the frost from the windowpanes. She had him beneath her, lit taper in hand, tipping the hot wax onto his skin, and he arched into surrender first with a pained rapture.

When he opened his eyes again she asked how he felt. “Like Teresa of Ávila,” he murmured, “visited by the seraph with the flame-tipped spear…”

“Last night I had teeth and claws; now I have wings and flames?”

“You possess all those things and choose what to manifest.”

“Not so consciously as some.”

If the scarcely-movement of his thumb on her was anything she could read, he knew she could last longer still and meant to find out just how much longer. He had probably granted her the spectacle of his ecstasy only to excite her more. Of course it worked.

All the firelight caught his irises and fell in. Folding herself close she noticed they were not black at all, but deep, deep red, with glints like glowing embers.

She swept the damp locks back from his brow and was lost there for a while.

At some point she rolled to pull him on top of her, so he played and drove her gladly half-mad and spoke hot against her ear. “But there is fire in us too, in the engines of our bodies; we breathe and combust to live, and it’s the oxidation that breaks down our systems, slowly burning us out. Brief candles indeed. If nothing else kills us, living itself will…”

And this was him talking dirty, life and death and chemistry and seraphim. He knew she liked it. But she didn’t have many words at the moment. She breathed his name, _Hannibal_ , a sigh and a mumble. Her nails inscribed his skin with cuneiform crescents and what was written there sprang from her own nature.

 

-

 

They’d put out the candles, then gone ahead and changed the sheets, fastidiously agreeing that the combination of wax debris and wet spots made for an unacceptable sleeping surface. The only light came from the hearth. She lay atop him warm and witless with bliss. He traced her shoulder blades as if to coax out wings.

When he rose from bed in the morning she saw her gun on the nightstand near her, beneath a candelabrum shaped like a stag’s head. It was still loaded.


	11. Sport

She checked the magazine and clicked it back in. The usually satisfying sound turned ominous as a bomb being set. “Is this a game?”

“What game would it be, Yumi?”

“Oh, you know, the dangerous game. In which prey that’s too defenseless is poor sport.”

She wasn’t the sort to fuck around with guns, not even this slender concealed-carry model which a comrade had once described, without sarcasm, as “cute.” So she didn’t point it at him. She rested the metal weight on her knee and watched him.

“I returned it because it’s yours.” Dr. Lecter pulled on a dressing gown. “If I meant to start a game, I’d at least do you the courtesy of waiting until after coffee.”

Her nail fretfully tapped the grip. “If it’s not a game, then that wasn’t the only reason you went to the basement in the middle of the night.”

He said nothing and gave nothing away.

“Did you hunt?”

“No.”

“Did you drug me? I should’ve felt you move.”

“No. You sleep well.”

She was sulking now, glowering instead of looking away. One who holds a loaded gun should not look away.

“Why does it make you angry?” he asked.

“Well, for one thing, I have a hard time believing that this doesn’t mean you’ve decided to try to kill me sometime soon. And I think I’m jealous that there were greater demands to you than sleeping beside me. And then there’s something bothering me about the basement. You must have even more to hide than what I already know.” Her thumb edged toward the safety without reaching it. “I have too many reasons to shoot you, some of them self-defense; and one, just one, not to.”

He looked at her with his eyes dark in the blue morning. “Beauty.”

Yumi stared back at him until the barrel was picking up the heat of her body. He stood so still that she imagined she could see his breath stir the air. She wouldn’t even have to rack the slide. Her cute little semi-automatic already had a round in the chamber, slid perfectly into place while she slipped in Eli Pendergast’s blood.

For a few days she’d been beating herself up over that failure, racking her concussed brain for what she should have done. (Should’ve had a damn sword; should’ve spent more time at the range; should’ve shot earlier, should’ve shot to kill.) Now it seemed more of an inevitability than a failure. Though she could rectify it.

Safety off. Lift, fire. Headshot. Her ears would be ringing as blood leaked from his. Ugly.

“I don’t want to shoot you,” she said finally. “I want to make coffee.”

“I was thinking of quiche…if you’re willing to wait for it.”

“I believe we’ve established how willing I am to wait for satisfying things… Actually, would you happen to have any small arms maintenance supplies?” She rubbed fortnight-old powder residue between her fingers. “Poor baby needs a bath.”

For some reason he seemed to flinch at her silly anthropomorphizing. Or not even that—like he blinked just a little too hard. But there was a shiver with it, through the air, as if a door elsewhere opened, altering the air pressure all through the house with an inaudible but perceptible rush…

She’d felt that in the night, she suddenly remembered, but never woke enough even to notice that he was gone from the bed. The coals in the hearth flaring, the windows ever so slightly trembling in their frames. The witching hour. The cellar door, it was the cellar door. _Don’t go to the basement._ The oubliette in the floor.

“I will get them,” said Dr. Lecter, cordial as ever, and she had no idea what she had just seen.

 _It’s too fucking early for ghosts,_ she thought. “Thank you. I’d appreciate that.”

 

-

 

Sometime while cleaning her gun on a towel spread in the parlor, Yumi realized that it would do very little to defend her in any event. He really had returned it just because it was hers. She ran her index finger over the company logo, the inscription beside it, and sighed at the ceiling. From somewhere nearby churchbells clamored.

 

-

 

“The Münchner Philharmoniker is at the Meyerhoff,” he said over the breakfast table. “It’s a rather rare engagement. I’d be very delighted if you would accompany me tonight.”

The quiche was bright and rich with sun-dried tomatoes and tart goat cheese. For a moment she wasn’t sure she understood, lacking the cultural capital, but she could recognize the term _philharmonic_. “…A symphony date?”

“Yes, it would be a date. With dinner first, if you like.”

“You mean dinner out? Are you able to do that? I’ve heard restaurateurs have a hard time enjoying themselves at restaurants.”

“I can’t help scavenging for inspiration, or insisting on a certain level of particularity; that doesn’t preclude any enjoyment of the experience.”

“I see…” It would feel odd to sit across from him at a table in a space full of other people, she thought. But that wasn’t what prickled at her. “So, I have to ask: are you inviting me because you genuinely want my company, or is it simply a courtesy because you want to go and if I don’t, you’ll leave me hogtied or worse?”

“I meant exactly what I said. I would be delighted.”

“You didn’t answer me…”

“You don’t believe me. But that is as much a low opinion of your own company as mistrust of me.” He leaned forward, making it seem like he would touch her face, although he would have to awkwardly strain his reach across the table to do so. “I do want your company. And I think the program will interest you—a selection of concertos by German Romantics.”

Her fool Chopin heart fluttered. “I’m not as familiar…with…”

“All the more, then.”

“Wait. You _still_ didn’t answer my question. What if I decline?”

His expression went cold. “Then I will go alone. I have not been hogtying you each time I leave the house. Returning your gun has made you bellicose, Yumi.”

“I…resent the fact that it’s no use,” she confessed.

The coldness softened into, perhaps, satisfaction. Or satisfied expectation.

“But thank you for giving it back. It does have a sentimental value.”

“You’re welcome,” he replied. “Though I find it curious that the object of sentimental value you chose to bring with you is an instrument of death, and not even your preferred instrument at that.”

“It’s just a little unobtrusive self-defense. Or it was supposed to be.”

His head tilted. How these gestures of his were getting into her. “Would you like some exercise in your preferred method?”

“What do you mean?”

“I have the day open, and I’m acquainted with the proprietor of a fencing club…”

“Oh, no, no—I’d embarrass everyone. I’ve been using the sword to _fight_. I haven’t fenced for sport in at least a decade.”

“I’ve lapsed for much longer. Will you fence me? It might be therapeutic.”

Of course he was versed in swordplay. Of _course_. She’d never have anything on him.

“For sport,” he added.

“You ask me on a date, then challenge me to a duel…” Her focus zoomed out for a moment to include the wall of greenery behind him, and back in to waiting eyes. “I can’t resist the symmetry. It would be my pleasure.”

He made a little nod, slow and almost courtly, and smiled. “At least some of the pleasure will be mine.”

She inadvertently recalled his voice enthralling her to keep still upon the table.

He looked at the flush coming into her cheeks as if to savor the sight, and then checked his watch, its platinum gleam not quite shy of ostentatious. “If we leave in half an hour, we should arrive as the morning classes are ending.”

“Oh. I’ll have to forego another slice of quiche, for a car ride,” she said mournfully. “It’s so rich. But it’s fantastic. What did you use in the crust?”

“One says ‘pastry,’ when it’s a quiche or a tart. I did experiment in the past, but a combination of goose fat and butter yields the most satisfying results. Geese, at least, are notoriously ill-mannered birds.”

 

-

 

The fencing club, suitably housed in an old church, had a shop and an armory. Having given away his supplies years ago, Dr. Lecter generously outfitted them both, and after he exchanged a few pleasantries with the stocky proprietor they suited up, and faced one another in the empty hall.

They had agreed to relax the rules. No confined piste; they would jump around all they liked. There would be no score kept and they would serve as their own judges. The term that applied was an oxymoron outside the salle—a friendly assault.

Yumi brought the sabre up in a salute. It had the strange slowness of nostalgia, a gesture she hadn’t made in a very long time. He returned it. She could always feel a particular serene solemnity in that moment.

They donned masks. The sabre was too light in her hand; the padded gear made her feel ineffably young. Through the mesh she could almost expect to see college teammates at the periphery. Or her first team captain, stunningly beautiful and ruthless, in high school, that school.

“I almost wish we wouldn’t use masks,” she mused aloud. “I can’t see who you are. I can barely see the present.”

“Considering that you haven’t been using the sword for recreation in some time, I would much rather not forego any of the protective gear,” he pointed out.

“That is a fair point; but when you said it might be therapeutic, I thought you meant I’d get to see your face when I bruise your ribs.”

“For a knight, you do have a vicious streak.”

“ _I_ never said I was a knight, Dr. Lecter. You did. Come on, you’ve got like six inches on my reach and you dodge bullets.”

“I still don’t think I’m wrong. But I love your vicious streak.” If he smiled she couldn’t see, but she imagined he did. “Let me see you move first, and the masks can come off for the final round.”

Her mouth twisted in a pout. By then she probably wouldn’t be able to hit him, unless he let her. But it was damn well worth trying, wasn’t it. “Fair. _En garde_ , then.”

Her body remembered the stance perfectly. All these things she had learned. She peered down the halls of memory, and saw her college teammates there horrified that she’d warped the formalized sport back into real bloody combat, but past them, radiant in the late afternoon light, was her high school captain, giving her a nod of old understanding.

“ _Prêt_ ,” said the teasing voice in the present, and she heard the layered pun he added. _Pray._

_Prey._

She breathed familiar air. “ _Allez_.” The world turned up its speed and they blurred into the assault.

 

-

 

The need for footwork and the emphasis on form make fencing seem to the novice akin to dancing. Like most romanticized notions, this has a pleasant ring in metaphor and is wildly mistaken in reality.

The sabre in particular is fast and mean. Yumi had studied the epée under her first captain, and only later, after the adolescence she’d jumped into halfway through had finished with her, was she told that she possessed the quickness of a _sabreuse_. Then she found that she also possessed the spirit—to truly use the blade, to cut as well as thrust.

Not a vicious streak, precisely, but a willingness to use what advantages being vicious could afford.

Her words had been mostly facetious. She seriously doubted that someone in so much control of himself would show any pain at all from what she could inflict with a practice blade. And a genuine desire to cause harm was a sure way to lose. In fencing, anyway.

Fencing means _defense_. The art of not getting killed.

Here one cannot afford to begin gestures before they have the full weight of certainty.

Even if Dr. Lecter was indeed not very practiced, he knew enough of what he was doing, and that panther agility did the rest. But here, she was faster still. She was younger by enough to make a difference. And she had practiced in arenas where her life depended on it.

She did not hold back from fighting mean, well outside what any rules would allow. Contact, leaping dodges, illegal ripostes and flèches. He expected no less. He had her jumping about with constant attempts to unbalance her. The only thing they particularly obeyed was the target area of the sabre. To deal one’s date a blow below the belt would be the epitome of bad form.

It is true, and especially with the sabre, that offense is the best defense.

Both knowing this, they made the assault as fast and mean and unruly as it might be. And though it was only for sport, what they were doing would scarcely be recognizable as the sport. They did not stop when hits were acknowledged—only at intervals when they agreed to take a moment to breathe. She was scoring more, in general.

On the surface, he was granting her the opportunity to vent any aggression. There might be any number of ulterior motives. Perhaps he meant to see her preferred method of fighting so that if she took up arms against him for real, the experience would afford him better chances.

But there was a distinct pleasure in it, which had nothing to do with the identity of her opponent. The application of skills she had earned with time and sweat. No magic, only her own muscle memory.

What was gawky turned lithe; what was hesitant turned quick and deadly. She did not fancy herself graceful, not even here, but she knew what this body was capable of.

He was quickly learning. She identified his limitations, too.

She twisted, in a way that would have earned a sound rebuke from any instructor, and lunged up for a strike that, with a real blade, would have neatly poked a hole through his heart; the practice blade snapped.

Recalling exactly how common an occurence that was, she had recommended that he purchase extra blades.

 

-

 

When the masks came off as promised it startled her, as if she had forgotten whom she faced. Then she nearly regretted it. The sight of him breathing a bit labored and face glistening, hair damped down—all too distracting.

And it was, in fact, very unsafe. A broken practice blade could be plenty sharp. Snap one at an unlucky angle with unlucky timing, and momentum might push it into someone’s throat.

“You’re beautiful,” he said, suddenly adoring, but she couldn’t know what it was that he admired—her physical aspect flushed and sweating, enjoying the sport; or the flit of thoughts across her face, desire and then deadly possibility; or something else, someone else, from the long halls of his memory.

“Not so bad yourself,” she exhaled, and stepped back to salute. It lasted longer, as they looked at one another.

“ _En garde_ ,” he said at last, with the rasp on the French _r_ that she could never replicate.

“ _Prêt_ …” And then she came back up out of the stance. “No.”

“What is it?”

“You were right. It’s too dangerous.” It was frustrating, the almost squeamish hurt with which her emotions now recoiled from the slightest possibility of doing him real harm, and she made it into a competitive joke. “I’ll have to divert my concentration with trying not to take your ear off or something.”

“Don’t you think I will be similarly handicapped? I have no more desire to take your eye out.”

“The risk is unaccaptable, after all.” Her honesty came back with a vicious streak. “If I do you any harm, I don’t want it to be an accident.”

He smiled.

It went backwards through her mind and knocked things over, rode the crest of the endorphin high of exertion, so that it felt like the first time anyone had ever smiled at her, like the first time she saw another person taking notice of her existence and glad for it.

Yumi leaned the sabre against the wall and picked up his mask. It smelled of new material. She went to him, close, and breathed in the scent of him instead but didn’t kiss, and he stood still as she reached up to place it on and fasten it. She lingered there with her eyes shut. He quietly brushed at the sweat on her brow and then fetched her mask to do the same for her… Fingers at the back of her head, as if he still felt there for the injury, but it was purely caress.

He stepped back and they picked up their weapons. “One more round?”

She adjusted her gorget. “Best of seven.”

“I love you.”

“What the—don’t say that in the salle! That’s some dirty goddamn fighting. _Allez_!” She was already lunging.

“Then you should not say ‘goddamn,’ either. It was once a church.”

In another second she realized he’d done it on purpose to spark her anger, to put the fight back into her. She laughed and bruised his ribs. She didn’t think he had let her.


	12. Possession

Chewing her lip in concentration, telling herself not to rush, Yumi brushed on dark gold eye shadow. She was not particularly practiced with makeup application; she had purchased some because the rest of the ensemble she’d chosen seemed dramatic enough to require it. She had not, of course, purchased it with any means of her own.

Dr. Lecter had asked— _asked_ and not insisted—that she allow him to better outfit her for the evening. Maybe he had coaxed her into it. Though all the clothes she had here, aside from what she’d arrived in, had been gifts out of his mysterious plutonian wealth, and it made little sense to demur now.

So he took her to some luxury boutique and gave her total freedom. She looked around the shop, and back at him stymied for direction, and asked what color tie he would wear.

He had given her a look that warmed her like an engine. _“I had garnet in mind.”_

Usually she preferred suits to dresses. She had gone several years without wearing anything related to a skirt. But presented with the options she got carried away with the idea of _costume_ , buying wholeheartedly into its iconography. So now she wore a knee-length sheath dress, deep garnet with a lace overlay and a belt with amber cabochons, and downstairs were pumps—that was the weird thing, she never got along with heels and she had intended to avoid them, but there were these deadly-graceful black things with soles entirely of bright red and she couldn’t resist the aesthetic.

He had expressed some regret that they did not have time for couture. But it was not quite a black tie event, after all. If she were to accompany him to the opera, for instance, there would have to be significantly more planning involved.

She blinked at this musing and worried that the soles would clash with the garnet. He assured her the dramatic effect was worth it.

The effect of the costume would be satisfactory; it was the finishing touches that gave her trouble. Her eye shadow was uneven and her short black hair was perpetually recalcitrant. He knocked at the door. “Yumi. If we’re late they will give away the reservation.”

“I’m sorry. I’m an idiot. I don’t actually know how this works.”

“Don’t be self-deprecating; it garners contempt, not sympathy. What is it?”

“Don’t scold people when they’re already frustrated!”

If he took the admonition into account, he gave no sign of it. “What has you frustrated?”

“Makeup.”

“Will you allow me to help?”

Sullenly, she opened the door. “How? Were you in the theater?”

“No, but I draw; and I have steady hands and an outside perspective.” He tipped her chin up to look closer. “You don’t have to wear any if it has no pleasure for you.”

“I do have to. All the rest of the color I’m wearing is dramatic. And it’s not that I don’t like it; I’m just not used to it… I probably have to start over.”

“Spoken like a perfectionist. It can be repaired.” He steered her closer to the mirror, under the light, and picked up the compact. “May I?”

He was freshly shorn of five o’clock shadow and his aftershave already registered in her rabbit brain as _mate_. She tipped her head back and shut her eyes. His thumb on the hollow under her brow was wet; he had licked it to take off some of the color.

It turned completely calming, strangely intimate. He dabbed with tissue and brushed more over her eyelids, and before long he said simply, “There. No trouble.”

She looked in the mirror; it was a subtle alteration, but smoothed and symmetrical and with an artist’s depth of tone. “Oh. Thank you.”

“If you wear that rouge, please be sure to blot it well, or it might end up on me…”

He had taken the frustration out of her, mostly, but she still saw someone strange to her in the mirror.

“You seem ill at ease,” he remarked with some concern. “You’re not forcing yourself into a presentation that you find uncomfortable? Was I remiss? Yumi sounds like a woman’s name—I never asked.”

“Not really, it’s just…been a long time and…” She touched the pale pink line that crossed her left cheek. “This is the only thing I can recognize. But it looks out of place with all the rest.”

“But you don’t want to cover it.”

“The lady at the makeup counter mentioned an excellent concealer. She didn’t mean for under my eyes.”

A blink seemed to wipe the warm solicitude from his face. He looked not hostile but alien.

Yumi shook off a chill. “Stop it. That wasn’t rude, it was just what magazines and management told her to say.”

“It was thoughtless.” He seemed to return to the present, looking at her with focus again. “What did you say, then? Did you let it go unpunished?”

“I stared at her for four seconds and told her I was a veteran. She stammered and asked where I served and I said I couldn’t answer that. I don’t think she believed me then.”

“You know what is true. And we have no need for convention so conventional it considers the hint of intrigue out of place.” From behind he tilted her chin up again and pressed the small of her back with his other hand to adjust her posture. “Self-consciousness can be useful. I’ll let you in on a secret: be aware first of your physical self, your bearing and expressions. The mind will follow the body. Hold your head high as if you own me.”

“Own _you_?” she laughed skeptically. “Isn’t it usually ‘as if you own the place’? I can’t own you.”

“But you do, a little bit.” He kissed the back of her neck, where she had lightly spritzed the eau de parfum he helped her pick, something shadowy and classic like a silent movie.

 

-

 

Her favorite thing, in fact, was the coat. It was midnight blue with brass buttons and militaristic flair, a piece that could only be described as badass. She probably should have made some protest about the price of that item, if nothing else, but it wasn’t in her. Anyway, he seemed pleased that she enjoyed fine things without pretensions of guilt.

Even the bracelet with which he surprised her, a cuff glittering with feather shapes of gold, and a few little diamonds for good measure.

“I’ll wear it tonight,” she said after he placed it on her, “but I can’t accept jewelry from you. I’m only borrowing it.”

“Precious metals and stones are where you demur?”

“Rings. Bracelets. Necklaces. Even pins. They always have a weight of possession on them, you know.”

“Earrings would have suited you well with that ensemble, but you don’t have piercings.”

“I imagine they’d feel heavy, too.” She tilted her wrist to and fro, admiring the effect. She could not remember the last time she’d worn anything that glittered. Gleam was one thing—glitter, quite another. “Although feathers are meant to defy gravity.”

“What do you mean to defy?”

Yumi looked up to see him framed by antlers and mirrors. His bronze and garnet tie brought out the red glints in his irises—or was that her reflection?

“Nonexistence,” she replied lightheadedly.

Dr. Lecter held the coat open for her. “Then you need only exist.”

She turned and slid into it, one arm and then the other, careful not to snag the left sleeve on the bracelet. “Thank you. No, you’re wrong there. Defiance is active. Feathers are tools for the purpose of defying gravity, but the feathered creature must spend the effort to flap its wings.”

He easily pulled on a wool overcoat and a relatively subdued checked scarf. “And what makes a flap of the wings against the inexorable pull of nonexistence?”

“Lots of things. Deliberate choice. The pursuit of beauty.” She fastened the middle three buttons of her coat. “Grief, survival, love.”

“Shall we be off to our shared pursuit of beauty, then?”

“Of course.”

She focused on the placement of her feet as they went to the garage, wondering if she would manage not to turn an ankle. But it was only footwork, after all; she could pull it off.

 

-

 

The fine little restaurant had a Basque name and the interior was well arranged, romantically close without being claustrophobic, warm with candles on the tables in the early dark. Surrounding conversations murmured softly, absorbing them into the drift of society. Wine flowed over savory small plates.

Across the narrow table she felt much nearer to him than in his home. Which was technically true—there was simply less space here, amid the cozy press of other people.

They spoke of music, of cities, of swords. Bach, Liszt, Parisian pigeons and remises.

There was a heady, nervous delight in her, as if she were being courted. Wasn’t she? He smiled and it reminded her suddenly of how he’d smiled at her in the salle.

Tipsily animated, she leaned an elbow on the table and blurted into a lull, “Tell me. Do you really like me, or am I just a piece of meat to you?”

He twitched, and in one swift motion stood and swished his napkin onto his chair and headed to the restroom, a hand at his mouth.

Blinking after him, she eventually realized that he must have still been tasting his last sip of Tempranillo and she had nearly induced a spit-take which he was much too refined to allow. Maybe it had gone up his nose.

She glanced from side to side with mischievous guilt, wondering if she had entertained any eavesdroppers, and took one final sip of the accursed tongue-loosener.

“Is everything all right, miss?” their attentive server asked, seeing her decisively push away a half-full glass of wine.

“Oh—fine.” Yumi smiled. “Would you take my glass, please? It’s very nice, but I’m afraid of overindulging.”

“Of course.” The aproned boy obliged, his sleeve tattoos just faintly visible through the white button-down shirt.

Other people had phones to check when this happened. She had nothing, and now she’d cut herself off. She stared idly around at the candlelit decor for the rather long minute until her date returned.

Dr. Lecter neatly sat down, placing napkin over lap again and straightening his jacket before looking at her. Leaning in, and looking at her. She noticed belatedly that her heart was pounding.

“That was untoward,” he said, lightly, letting her glimpse his contained amusement. There was a slight flush to his face, perhaps from coughing. The candle shone red in his eyes.

“It was inappropriate. I’m sorry.” Her gaze dropped. It was hilarious. It was blisteringly stupid and dangerous. “I don’t know why I said that.”

“I do.” He paused for a heartbeat—one of his, anyway; a good few of hers. “But I see you blamed it on the wine.”

“Well…” She chewed her lip. “You must have noticed I’ve tried not to imbibe too quickly around you. I enjoy the stuff, but I’m…a bit of a rude drunk.”

“In that, you show a better presence of mind than many,” he remarked. “I am partly to blame, then: I refilled your glass while we were deep in conversation. But I don’t mean to brush aside whatever feeling prompted that question. What can I say to convince you that I do enjoy your company?”

He was being rather gallant about it, she thought, but for show. Maybe he meant to dismiss it from discussion only in the present setting. She’d pay for it at some point.

But the liquid courage, whatever agenda it could have, was still in her. “Tell me something about your past.” At the way his focus shifted beyond her, she retracted a bit. “Not more than you would want to. A silly anecdote. An image.”

“Guess,” he said, hushed. “Tell me what you imagine.”

It was too easy to construct. The murmuring candlelight receded and she breathed air from somewhere else.

“Pines and mist. Cold winters. The Black Forest, or somewhere like it. Old cities with spires.” She had to blink away the smell of snow. “It looks like a fairy tale. Give me something real.”

“Aren’t you a fairy tale yourself, and quite real?”

“You’re trying to change the subject.”

He deliberated with a sip of wine, searching for something in an internal library. A phrase from the twenty-fifth Variation darted through her mind.

“When I came of legal age I briefly considered a change of name,” he narrated. “In the same span of days I purchased a Vespa—a motor scooter, the brand name being Italian for ‘wasp.’ The very first time I took it above sixty kilometers per hour and heard the motor humming like its namesake, a wasp got caught in my jacket. By the time I pulled over to shake it free, it had managed to sting me seven times, and it stung me once more in the face for my trouble. I decided not to interfere with names.”

An incredulous smile came over her face as he told the tale. “I was afraid that would end in a crash! A lot of people would lose control with a stinging insect stuck in their jacket.”

“You’ve remarked before on my control.”

“Yes, well—I’m sure your good Lord has yet to invent something that could make you lose it.” In the absence of a wine glass, Yumi twirled her water glass.

“You’re avoiding the question you want to ask,” he observed.

“I don’t want to ask it now. I remarked before on your name, too; I think it must be for the better that you didn’t change it.” She looked into his eyes where the flame flickered and fell in. “Thank you for the story.”

Hannibal Lecter smiled at her. They ordered espresso.

 

-

 

Chagrin came over her in the car. She kept expecting him to bring it up again; he didn’t, which made it snowball inside her head.

“Just say something…” She covered her face with her hands, barely remembering not to rub her eyes and ruin all that work. “You’re still thinking about it, aren’t you? I drank too fast and it was funny when I thought of it and— I- I can’t believe I said that.”

“Do forgive yourself, Yumi. It was funny, if terribly sophomoric.”

“It wasn’t funny. It was but I don’t want to have said it. Oh, no, that was so awful. I’m sorry…”

“I am not offended,” he said fondly. “I’m flattered.”

“…What?”

“You opened the gate on your terror trying to make me laugh. I can’t help but find it charming.”

 _Is that what I did?_ she thought, and glanced at him warily. “Well, I didn’t mean to make you choke.”

“I know.” He showed her a small smile somewhere between adoring and conspiratorial. “If you did, I’m sure you would find a way.”

It contained a multitude of meanings, sickly with terror, sharp with violence or redolent with thrill, running the gamut. The sum total existed only in the air between them.

And that was what she had intended to say. Vulgar, yes, and so horrifying it nearly escaped into the absurd. But something that had meaning only he would hear and that only she knew to speak. Ignorance is bliss; knowledge is power. A claim. Possession.

_I own him, a little bit._

City lights washed over them. The curve of the concert hall loomed out of the glow. He took the car toward a garage and she was openly gazing at him, at the color in his lips against the metropolitan chiaroscuro.

“Yes?” he teased after parking.

“Your mouth looks red sometimes.” She leaned over unabashed. “From wine, or whatever excitement you feel, maybe. But it’s beautiful.”

Both at once they moved closer, but short of meeting.

“Red fruit is often the sweetest. The eons taught us that red must mean something good.”

“Beauty is born of instinct like everything else.” She sought him, the heat of his breath on her upper lip, radiating through her.

He put his index finger to her lips. “Save your appetite. We have a concert to attend.”

She caught at it, briefly kissing that fingertip, and sat back to smooth her dress, and got out of the car holding her head high.

But he was not demonstratively possessive as he walked her out of the garage—no hand at her elbow in smothering chivalry, only a nearness and a matching of pace. She appreciated that.

Their breath clouded on the near-freezing air almost in tandem. Her steps struck the pavement in a low percussive fanfare, bringing to mind something she had read once about high heels having their origin in royal court fashion, men’s fashion. Beside him she measured her strides with the envy of kings.

At the entrance to the venue they joined the flow of patrons, and soon left it as he presented a membership card. His finger smudged the plastic with viscous red from her own lips. He left it there as if he never noticed.

Not demonstratively possessive.

It made her want to up the ante. After the coat check she narrowed the space between them, brushing up to him, a feline demand for attention.

He caught her hand in his. He twined their fingers and lifted her hand to his lips, and the kiss he gave her there just below her knuckle was not light or furtive, but firm and sweet, lingering.

Her breath hitched. She had not expected such a display of affection. Even though she had asked for exactly that. Should it be so startling that he gave?

Adoration suffused her, a narcotic euphoria—and he would know better than she how similar was the neurochemistry involved. She held on as they walked, pressing his fingers between hers, to let him know that the gesture was quite welcome.

Perhaps there was necessarily a degree of possession in the display of affection, of entitlement in physical contact. If so it could be quite reciprocal.


	13. Grace

There were people in the VIP section with whom he had to exchange pleasantries. Yumi felt appraising eyes on her and blinked coolly, her glance flicking toward him when she was introduced as his fencing partner. He may have let go her hand but they stood close enough together to advertise a degree of intimacy.

“And what do you _do_?” a matron in pearls demanded, with a ferocity suggesting that she herself didn’t do nearly enough to keep her mind occupied.

“Things I’m not at liberty to discuss,” Yumi replied, and the slight smile of intrigue came unforced to her face, matching the scar.

“Oh, one of _those_ types,” the matron sighed. Luckily the house lights blinked before she could launch into a sociopolitical diatribe.

People murmured and dispersed for their seats. A towheaded man addressed the _Herr Doktor_ with some genuine-sounding friendly sentiment, looking for a moment at Yumi. She didn’t flinch from gazing curiously back, which flustered him, as Dr. Lecter made a charming nod and responded in German.

“What was that?” Yumi asked as they sat.

“I’m expected to make an appearance at the reception after the performance. I said it would be brief.”

She peered up at the orchestra, taking in the soft cacophony of last-minute tuning. The bracelet felt warm on her wrist. Did he feel lonely, having to meet all those expectations with so much behind the veil, or did it amuse him that they could not see past the shadow play?

Probably both. Though loneliness had little to recommend it. If one could shift one’s feelings at will, she imagined, surely that would be among the first to go.

She turned to him, wondering where his corvid gaze fell. It was on her. His eyes were dark in here; as she noticed that everything else slid into shadow. The house lights were off. A susurrus of polite applause began. They joined it and she hooked her foot at the back of his.

Mendelssohn’s violin concerto appealed to her immensely, sweet and mesmerizingly dramatic, though the high notes conspired with the wine to give her a headache.

She made no comment aloud, but he leaned close to her and said under the ensuing applause, “It would seem several of the ensemble violinists are still jetlagged.”

Yumi laughed incredulously. “That almost sounds like gossip.”

“Merely observation.” He turned toward her, nearly nuzzling her hair. “You have a headache as well, don’t you?”

She mock-sulked. “Can you smell that?”

“No. You flinched at the high _E_.”

“My own fault. It’ll pass, probably. I’m enjoying it anyway.”

“I’m glad to hear it.” His voice was low, not having to travel far, as he almost, almost kissed her temple, as if to ease her headache that way, and making it abundantly clear for anyone seated behind them that “fencing partner” was something of a euphemism.

The blood rushed to her skin in pleasure, and then she shivered as heat escaped her body into the concert hall air, kept cool for the performers who labored under the blazing spotlights. She noticed it in abstract, thinking of entropy.

It didn’t escape his notice, either. His head tilted in concern. “Will you take my jacket?”

“No. Thank you.” She wasn’t sure why she refused. Pride, or just vanity?

“I had to offer.”

They sat properly upright. The conductor was saying a few halting words before he turned to his orchestra and raised his arms again. Yumi’s headache was already tapering off—or perhaps it was about to resume with the concert.

It did not resume. Endorphins, after all, were effective painkillers.

The timpani pounded to open the next piece—Richard Strauss, of whom, if she recalled, she was not a fan, but the rather dark touch caught her attention; then she raised her eyebrows at the piano’s florid part, jauntily operatic, practically laughing at itself. Dr. Lecter turned subtly toward her at the same time that her glance slid his way, so that they exchanged a look, a joke, both in the same space, hearing the same presence of personality in the music.

A few bars after they returned their focus to the orchestra she reached for his hand.

He welcomed the gesture. His fingers curled warm around hers, and did not stay still, but made tiny caressing movements, unhurried, adoring. Bliss put her at ease, starting in her core, spreading through her belly.

Her body noticed before her conscious mind did. But beneath the notes of whimsically catastrophic Romanticism the tone shifted, from pure affection to teasing. It was his thumb over her knuckles at first and then—so subtly—his fingers on the underside, playing there with the nerves of her palm.

He knew exactly what he did to her with a preternatural acuity, his hyperawareness focused on her, as if neurons fired with a visible light or synapses had a scent he could detect. The pad of his finger slowly stroking her palm in perfect deliberate mimicry of a touch that would not be amiss lower down.

Building pressure, and rhythm, until it was not at all innocent. Until he pressed her metacarpal and she felt it through to the apex of her thighs and she was trying not to move, trying not to press her legs together in desperation for something there, pressing her lips together instead.

They did not look at one another. She allowed herself to wonder if he was intent on creating gossip himself, if he would lean over to kiss her in here. If he would reach…

The thought was maddening. But he would not. There was only this invisible, unbearable teasing, the music distantly mocking her as he moved his hand around hers to bring his thumb against her palm in unmistakable thrusts.

Her legs were clenched. She shut her eyes, tightly. It was so relentlessly intimate it almost seemed like—like she could come from this—

A crescendo struck. His grasp shifted, tightened, and as the concerto came to its climax his hand closed around her bare wrist with sudden vicious force, not painful but violently sweet, his thumb pressed down hard on her radial artery to claim the pulse that throbbed under his touch. She tensed, very nearly throwing her head back, somehow managing not to. Somehow keeping down the cries that wanted to break from her throat.

The music softened and so did the clutch of his hand, easing back into affection, fingers brushing calm over her skin as if in postcoital languor but she was still trying not to gasp, wound up with aching need while the timpani rumbled into silence.

The applause almost startled her; they joined it and then people were standing. Moving. It was intermission and that meant, what, twenty minutes?

Yumi got to her feet, dizzy with lust but determined to keep her balance, one goal firm in her mind. If it amused him enough—and after all that she suspected it would—he would oblige her.

He stood beside her, only polite. She felt wet enough to worry that other people without unusually keen senses might catch a whiff of seraglio; and he showed no evidence of any corresponding affliction, but seemed only curious when she looked at him, even a bit smug.

 _You absolute rake,_ she thought, but leaned closer to him and said only, “Follow me.”

He had the aisle seat. She edged neatly past him and made good time, shuffling herself out to the corridor through the jumble of other bodies anxious for restrooms and refreshments. Fortunately she had always been wiry and adept at cutting quickly through crowds, even before any training—a talent that served her well with the added challenges of heels and arousal. She headed upstairs against the numbers. She did not look back to ensure that he was keeping up but the thought excited her somehow. A dangerous game…

Indeed, he caught up before long, and murmured conversationally at her shoulder, “Where are we going?”

“To find a secluded wall, against which I will ask you to throw me.”

“The old opera houses are better for that. This place is too modern.”

“Have some faith, will you. I don’t even need to be a black-ops veteran to find somewhere to hide in here…”

The crowd had thinned out. A few yards away, the next flight was was blocked off with standard-issue velvet rope, from which hung a sign reading _No Admittance_. She glanced side to side—she had dodged the crowd, as intended—and ducked under the velvet rope. He stepped easily over it.

The air was musty further up. The sparse hall lights showed some doors, which she tried opening, and went into the first unlocked one. Lighting equipment storage, it looked like—there were a few bulky, probably obsolete light fixtures in one corner, some chairs, and not much else. She flicked the switch on the wall but nothing turned on.

Before she clinched the decision that this was a place to resolve the tension Dr. Lecter shut the door behind them, leaving the room in utter darkness. An involuntary sound of dismay escaped her. He took out his phone and switched on the LED for the camera flash, then set it down on a folding chair as a tiny lantern, and in the wan illumination he turned to her—

“Ask me,” he said.

Awaiting her signal, as always.

If he gave her those measured doses of fear now it was not to see her afraid—it was to thrill her, because it pleased her, because (against any semblance of better judgement) she loved it.

She stepped closer to him while her voice found itself. “I would like you to push me against a wall, please, and finish what you…started…”

He was moving toward her before she finished speaking, first taking her by the waist so she followed his steps back and back in a shadowy dance, her skin all electrified with craving—and he shifted into the part she wanted with unfailing grace, with complete willing sincerity, and his arms were around her, one hand cradling her head as the weight of him pressed her up against the wall. His mouth on hers, softly, deeper—and the taste of red, synesthetically bright. He had bitten his tongue for her… She took the offering, clutching at his back with high whines of cathedral-vault ecstasy.

It seemed to her that she had been searching a very long time for this.

Longer than she knew how to remember.

His hand moved down at last, hiking up her dress, and then pulling down tights, and panties with them. His thumb pausing at another pulse point, the femoral artery now, in the soft part where hip joined leg—all of this well within the spheres of his expertise, where and how things lay, but with her he seemed to catch the fascination anew, textbooks turning to hymnals. She breathed his breath and was not ashamed to beg.

He stroked her where she was ready—much too ready—and she grasped at him in kind, going for his belt.

But he shooed her hands away. “Considering my role in your present condition, I’m glad to follow through so you can enjoy the rest of the concert without being lost to your appetites,” he said at her ear, “but I will not frantically copulate with you in a neglected artifact of seventies architecture.”

“Why not?”

“For one thing,” and he was fairly purring now, teasing her, “as we both know, that is an act which deserves to be savored at leisure.”

“True, but I want you now.” Her fingers curled into the back of his collar, wanting to scrunch in his hair, but still wary of messing it up.

“If I must be plain…there simply isn’t time for me to finish before the intermission ends.”

“That sounds like your problem.”

He drew back to give her a look of surprise. “You greedy little stoat…”

“Will you expect me to apologize for my nature?” She touched his face, the sharp delineation of cheekbone beside the eyes that took her in, and unsubtly bucked her hips against his.

He smiled. “You and I know better. I concede.”

He knelt down to remove her tights all the way, and she lifted one foot from its shoe and then the other to assist, while in the meantime he closed in to taste the slick needy parting of her thighs. It sang through her nerves sweeter than choirs. She cried out wordless and then barely coherent, “Oh please—!”

And yet thoughts could still dart through her mind, meteor-like, so that when he stood to face her again—the fine wool of his trousers subtly scratchy as he pressed one leg between hers, but careful not to get it wet—she had to ask him: “Did it sting? It’s acidic there, isn’t it—did it sting where you bit your tongue?”

“Yes,” he breathed against her throat, his hands over her dress and then under, at her iliac crests. “Like wine.”

When she felt for him now he was hard, and she went for his belt again, his fly. He stepped out of shoes and pants, quickly folding the latter and draping them over a chair—willing to frantically copulate but not to don wet or rumpled trousers afterwards.

He kissed her again and she knew nothing but blazing ecstatic greed. Her nails dug into his backside and she felt him gasp—it went through her with a wave of euphoria.

“Tell me,” came the whisper at her temple.

“I want you. I want you inside me.” Simple as that, no artifice, no other meaning.

With the wall for leverage he lifted her up by the haunches and eased himself into her. Nearly too easy. Her toes curled and a shoe clattered to the cheap linoleum. His mouth was warm on her neck as he rocked himself against her. Kissing, and tasting, a broad shameless stroke of tongue up the line of her carotid. She scratched beneath his shirt, sighing, helpless in the rush.

She had noticed, and he must have noticed as well, a strange and causeless particularity: she only used his given name in this state, close and real, spellbound with chemistry. And she said it now, but on a sharp exhalation that inadvertently produced a consonant at the beginning, so that it sounded like a word, the word for what he was that she would not say, she must not say.

He heard it, too.

She thought she felt the lips at her throat curve in a smile. She had already forgotten why, only knowing it might be dangerous. He adjusted his angle of entry to press closer still as he rasped at her in French again—and she was a quick enough study. _Take me. Take me._

Beneath her clawing groping hands she felt the muscles of his back working, his breath harsh as he strained to give himself to her and she was nearly—nearly—but someone moved the wrong way, or he was only tired, and the balance he had her in against the wall momentarily faltered. She made an awkward squeak of alarm, but he recovered without letting her fall, and they laughed at it.

“Not easy to keep up with a _sabreuse_ ,” he panted. “Here—stand for me—”

He set her down, her right foot bare and the other still barely in its shoe, but that leg he lifted again and lowered his stance and thrust himself back into her—

A cry rose from her, the kind one ought to stifle in a public place. This was not, perhaps, quite as acrobatically _in flagrante_ thrilling as having her up against the wall riding him—but he aligned himself precisely against her cluster of nerves.

“Even better, isn’t it.” His other hand was at her breast, her shoulder, the nape of her neck.

“Oh _god_ yes—” It was only a whimper lost in a kiss, raw and fumbling, and then within the minute the pleasure had a hold of her, the fierce delicious surge.

It was enough to send him to the edge too, and he gasped into her shoulder as it faded from her, so she clawed hard at the flesh over his sacrum, and down under his cheek—and the moan he made was high, as if taken unaware, as he groped at the wall for balance, shuddered and spilled into her. She whispered his name again, in rapture, in possession.

He lowered her leg, catching his breath. The light was barely there but her eyes had adjusted well. For the second time that day she saw him damp with sweat. He hadn’t even removed his jacket. She brushed at his brow and when he focused on her it burned in her core. Her fingers traveled in awe over the angles of his face, the curve of his lips, the pulse at his throat, staying there, feeling the quickness of his blood. The smile he gave her was adoration, beatific, and an answering smile trembled at her mouth and failed in naked wonder. Her eyes were wide, trying to hold him.

It had always been too late.

“I love you,” she said like a child discovering words. They were already alive in her. “I love…what you are…? All this grace and terror and— I love you. I love you.”

“I know.” He only softened, nuzzling at her face in joy. “I know, I know. Dear heart, _mon cœur_ …”

He went on in half a dozen languages. They all sounded beautiful.

“Quickly,” he said then with no less tenderness, and disentangled himself. “They close the doors; and you’ll like Schumann, I promise.”

“I love you,” came out again like glossolalia.

He took her hand and kissed it. “I am more than a little bit in love with you. Come with me, Yumi.”

Dr. Lecter was stepping into his pants again. Dazed, she looked at the disarray of her tights on the floor and finally, spurred by the air of intrigue, set about putting them back on.

“We are a bit smudged,” he observed, “but there should be just enough time for us to tidy up with the benefit of a restroom mirror…”

“Oh—oh, no.” Sex while upright had immediate, liquid consequences. As if her knickers had not been wet before.

“What is it?”

“It… Um, your…” She went red. “You can probably smell it.”

Completely unruffled, he only fished a silk handkerchief from an inside pocket and handed it to her. “Not to worry. That’s my doing.”

“After you said you wouldn’t be able to,” she sniffed, turning away to reach into her tights and wipe off as best she could.

“My mistake. I underestimated your powers of persuasion.”

“Are you going to want this back?”

A sardonic, almost sheepish smile came to his face. “No. I think that’s a death knell for a handkerchief.”

“Little-death knell…”

Then he laughed. “You are a little deadly. Quickly.”

They hurried out, down the stairs back to civilization. The lights blinked to announce the imminent end of intermission. The soft sound of his laughter rang in her ears with the murmurs of endearment that needed no translation; their hands touched, and they parted ways to respective restrooms.

Yumi stepped inside as if from a hurricane. She was full of this mess, this thrill, this terrific numinous high, a sex-soaked rag in her fist—she threw it away and washed her hands, the mirror showing her lipstick-smudged flushed wild face, pinprick pupils adjusting back to the bright fluorescent light. _God help me, I love him, I love I love I love._

The crash of emotion in such mere fractions of time. The slender charged space between heartbeats, between slices of the knife, between neurons and lines of newsprint—

With the damp paper towel and a bit of hand soap she hastily scrubbed the lipstick from her face. A stranger knowingly side-eyed her; she scarcely noticed.

_Run._

The word came from somewhere. Yumi wasn’t even sure it came from herself. Something wavered in the mirror, or maybe the lights flickered.

Run?

Her hands shook. It was going to hurt when she felt what it meant and she knew it was right and she knew she had to do it now.

That feeling was not a lie. But it was not the only truth.


	14. Flight

Yumi held the pumps in her hand to avoid the staccato report of the heels. She could rely on his vanity to detain him long enough. She poked her head out from the bathroom and flew on silent stocking-feet between puzzled stragglers, following signs down to the lobby.

The memory of blood on her tongue and the radiant ache of the sublime. A thought like a dissonant leitmotif and its image a moment later: the phrase _Chesapeake Ripper_ on newsprint. All of these things were true.

He had both the coat check tickets; she was going to be cold. Too bad—she really did like that coat. And after all that her gun was abandoned in his home, too… Nothing for it. She put on her shoes and left the symphony hall.

Outside the wintry air set on her like a cold shower. While she gulped it in, as if the shock of temperature would kickstart some sense, the bay wind immediately put a chill into the lingering dampness in her unmentionables. Scowling, she gained her bearings and started walking.

With no real ideas to speak of, she had planned for this indeterminate days ago—no, not planned, but speculated, gathering information. She knew perfectly well that surveillance and technology went hand in hand. Such a considerate mode of supervision, to leave that iPad with her during the day, but did he really expect a black-ops veteran to be so clueless as to research anything of substance without finding the “private browsing” setting first?

And the maps he had given her for the day out, transit maps and timetables—of course she had studied them. With genuine curiosity, by then, not even the speculation of intent. But they were there in her head now.

Maybe he wouldn’t try to chase her. The thought came with disappointment. It was there and real and she would not listen to it now. She did not look back.

These fancy shoes were certainly a hindrance. She would much rather be running; it would keep her warmer, too. But after a few minutes she found the State Center metro station.

Shivering, she stood at the ticket machine and bought a day pass with the scraps of cash in her clutch. She thought of pink under her nails, wondering if there would be any little red spots on his shirt now and there, yes, that set her chest aching and she was moving anyway, down with the humming escalator.

The station was not crowded. She clacked down the platform, still hoping to check a transit map, and got distracted by the strange high ceiling with some kind of sculptural structure hanging above. It struck her as ominously surrealist in a moment when she had hoped for mass transit to supply a sense of utilitarian practicality.

Someone was staring at her. She turned, on full alert—it was only another woman, similar build but a little younger than herself, wearing a nose stud and a fleecy hat and an oversized hoodie with a silhouette of a sci-fi spaceship.

“Sorry. Just admiring your shoes.”

Yumi enviously eyed the neon sneakers on her interlocutor’s feet. “Want ’em?”

“Huh?”

“I’ll trade you.”

“What—wait, really?”

“I’m completely serious. I want yours. You think we’re about the same size?”

“Uh, I guess, but… These are bargain bin Nikes. Those look like new Louboutins. What’s the catch?”

“No catch.” Yumi idly glanced at the platform display. She wished the clock was analog; she wanted to see how slowly the second hand moved. “Look, I’m sure it sounds weird but there’s a deal here if you want it.”

The young woman finally grew suspicious—or worried, rather. “Are…you okay?”

She was a terrible liar. “About that. Seriously, can I have your shoes?”

The westbound train came.

“I’m Dot. Get on this train with me. We’ll trade.”

Yumi wanted an eastbound train, but this was here first. “I was taking it anyway. Thanks.”

The trains were frequent enough, she knew. She could turn around later.

The doors dinged and closed behind them. The train groaned into motion, not before Yumi glimpsed a well-tailored suit descending the escalator. “Fuck.”

“Okay, you have to tell me what’s the matter,” said Dot, untying her shoes, and sat up again, feeling Yumi’s prey-animal stillness. “Why don’t you even have a coat? Is someone like, stalking you?”

Dot looked out the window. Dot, she knew, would catch his searching gaze while the train left him behind.

“Don’t look,” she said, too late.

“Is it that guy on the platform who looks like a fucking Bond villain?”

Yumi didn’t bother to ask what that meant. “You shouldn’t have looked.”

“Tell me what the problem is or there’s no deal.”

She sighed. There were simple enough answers that weren’t quite lies. “Crazy boyfriend.”

Dot looked at her as if holding back a remark on her taste in men, but told her firmly, “I’ll stay with you. We’ll go to the cops.”

“That won’t help.”

“Why? Uh…are you…like, an escort?” Dot’s words hesitated but she pushed her sneakers over readily.

“No.” Yumi gave away the pumps. “He’s, um, foreign. An ambassador. Diplomatic immunity.”

Words she pulled from a magazine served well enough as shorthand for pan-universal truth: the authorities, whatever they were, served money and status. 

Dot’s eyes widened. “Holy shit? No. Come on. Really? Well—stay with me, my advisor knows the Chief of Staff’s lawyer, I’ll call her.”

“No. Listen.” Yumi tied the sneakers, gratefully stretching her toes, and gave Dot a level look. “I don’t want anyone else involved. I’m going to take care of this.”

“You’re scared. You’re desperate for running shoes when you’re getting on the subway. I can’t just—”

“I’m going to be okay.”

She wasn’t sure if it was a lie. There was just enough possibility of truth for her to say it.

Sleek motion in the following car, just visible through the windows. Somehow he’d gotten on the damn train, jumped on between cars like you weren’t supposed to do and forced the door open, something. Shouldn’t surprise her that he was able to pull that off. At least the metro demographics worked in her favor to remove any further element of surprise: he stood out too much amid the shuffling students and car-less working class. But then so would she, in her garnet lace and glittering cuff bracelet…

No sword, no magic, no gun; but she had knees and elbows and running shoes. And her wayward wits.

The train pulled into the next station. “Get off the train,” said Yumi. “Call someone to get you. Go.”

“But—”

“Please believe me. Get off the train.”

Dot fidgeted, looking pained, and stood in her new heels.

Yumi nodded. Dot stepped through the open doors.

In the seat she left behind a small red oblong thing. A pocket knife. Dot hadn’t been fidgeting—she’d been trying, again, to help.

Yumi palmed it, smiling helplessly. A tiny pocket knife for a fight she had already lost with a gun.

 

-

 

She did not look in his direction. The first thing she did—angling herself away from others’ eyes, more out of a concern that an open knife on the subway might cause some alarm than anything like modesty—was to cut into the right side seam of her dress and tear a vent up to her hip for mobility.

She considered ditching the golden feather cuff, but it had pointy edges—just enough for the possibility of serving as a weapon to scratch and distract. Whatever good that might do. But the clutch had to go. A large amount of small change could have made it a decent bludgeon, but as it was the bag did nothing but take up a hand. She stuck the transit pass in the waistband of her tights in case she needed to board something else.

What was he waiting for? If he could jump onto the train what was stopping him from moving into this car? Had he already brought too much attention on himself?

No. He was waiting for her to move first. Of course.

It would have to be her.

Yumi’s thoughts turned and flashed with pixel-sharp clarity. The friendly assault earlier had served to establish for her exactly how quickly she could move without the arsenal of magic to which she had grown accustomed in another world. She would move when she was ready and her body would obey.

The train stopped at Penn-North. The shoes were a near fit, but rather wide, considering she had on tights and not gym socks. She adjusted the laces.

The train moved on and when the doors opened at Mondawmin she looked without turning her head. As she thought: oncoming headlights on the other track. The doors closed.

Yumi moved only when the train was moving again. Sneakers squeaked on vinyl. She darted to the door at the end of the car, yanked hard, stepped out between the cars and jumped.

It was close enough for an easy step, which, with the train’s motion, would have twisted her ankle on impact. From the air she landed well, both arms spread, a couple of yards to spare before the end of the platform. Her heart beat in battle time, her senses tuned high enough to register that the platform was longer than the trains and the last car on the other train would come to a halt at some distance. But she knew how many leaping steps it would take to get there.

Dr. Lecter was on the platform, in the way.

Her mind worked fast, spy-trained to take advantage of the lightning speed of cognition. Rage and fear were only fuel. This time she would burn them.

Option _1_ : run in front of him, shove hard, get on the train. (Risky. She couldn’t expect to take him unawares with a shove; he would probably grab her instead.)

Option _2_ : accept that she’d failed to shake him and get on the train anyway. (Perhaps best, but would come with a feeling of admitting defeat, which might later slow her down.)

Option _3_ : run behind him and do something else that he might not as easily predict because she hadn’t yet determined what. (Would probably just cause her to miss the train.)

He never had to _wait_ for her to move. He had known to step off the other train before she began to look up, and not from any visible signals she had made. Her action had been perfectly predictable. The westbound train went out to the suburbs; there would be fewer eyes to protect her and nowhere to go. She had to want to change to an eastbound train, which ran downtown and right by the damn central police department for fuck’s sake.

The doors opened.

He moved with no urgency and did not look at her, but he was aware of her position, she could be certain. He waited to see whether she would make the train.

She should assume that her flight had been taken as inconsiderate and ill-mannered at best, and that she was now in immediate danger. Running attracts a predator’s attention.

He might pretend otherwise. If she initiated a direct interaction (by, for example, shoving) he would most likely try to calm her, at once performing for any potential onlookers and turning down the gaslights for her. She did not trust herself to be unsusceptible to the charm. Option _1_ was crossed out.

If the point was to lose him, all she had to do was get on a vehicle without him. But, having already caught up with her, he was well able to anticipate her every move. If she went up to the street she would either get on a bus or wander around by foot until she got tired, and he could follow. If she got back on another westbound train and waited until the tracks emerged above ground, then got on top of the train to hide, she might lose him but might as easily lose her grip in the cold.

The only way to shake him off would be to claim asylum with someone else, civilian or authority, and that could only end badly—for her, ultimately, or for the someone else.

Options _2_ and _3_ were the same, then, really. Just a difference in timing.

She did not run, but stood tall, and walked behind him. He stepped back from the train as the doors closed. He never turned but his attention was tangible, raising the hairs on her skin like a field of static electricity.

(And she was careful, so careful, not to look or even glance sidelong at the lines of the suit over his waist the shift of perfect shoulders as he moved slightly the back of his hair where her fingers had just been maybe half an hour ago and the fine dust of her skin would still be lingering on his, why, it was sour in the back of her mouth like betrayal, like self-betrayal, stinking like sin.)

How did it smell to him, the waft of satisfied lust and the stench of fear over the perfume he’d bought her?

—The perfume. If he was gifted with such bloodhound acuity…if he helped her select a pricey perfume that no one else on the local metro in this town would be wearing…he’d put a damn tracking device on her.

Yumi stepped onto the escalator to the concourse. The eastbound train departed.

At a fair distance he followed her. She didn’t have to look, or smell—she could sense the pace of his movement through the station, the way heads turned to mull over whether it would be worth mugging him. This space was not meant for him, this infrastructure, this new-world impatience. This might be his city but a city like this could never be his.

It was not hers, either, but she felt slightly more at home in here.

She meandered on the concourse, taking in the floor murals, the commercial imagery. There was a shopping mall above ground. It would be closed now—no help. She went back down the other escalator to wait. He followed after an interval.

 _Is someone stalking you?_ Yes. Spurned lovers stalk, and so do tigers.

Would he spring? Would he leap at her with dulcet claws out, tearing into the underbelly of her emotion?

As her crisis-mode brain followed the branches of possibilities it seemed to her that he must be doing the same, that he was measuring and weighing each thing she might do—and how was it that she still felt so near, so close to him, as when he did not shy from returning her gaze?

It was the ravenous power of his perception, to encompass, to engulf. It had taken her in, it would break her down. What hope was there? She was already eaten.

In angry retaliation she considered that, with luck and momentum and impeccable timing, she might be able to throw him in front of the next oncoming train.

He deserved that end. Quick, grisly, denied the artful horror in which he thought he lived. Execution by infrastructure.

She recoiled from the thought as from an unexpected burn—more pain than she had prepared for, the image and the feeling so vivid that she nearly, very nearly looked at him, to see him alive.

She could go to him and this could stop.

Seconds marched ponderously by in the molasses of temptation, the hurt threatening to push her toward him. His bracelet glittered at her wrist and Dot’s knife perched in her waistband warmed by her skin.

She forced the tumult back into order. He would chase her, and only a great favor from fortune would throw him off. That was how things stood.

The important thing was that she ran.

A prerecorded announcement echoed bleakly in the quiet station, warning of thieves with sticky fingers for electronic devices.

The westbound train came and went. The eastbound train came and she boarded. One car down, so did he.

She breathed slow, stretching her legs.

One station, and two. And three, back at State Center. The intervals between the doors opening and closing seemed to creep longer each time. Yumi couldn’t keep still. She changed cars, moving toward the center of the train, uncertain at which end of the station she would find the way up to the street.

She lingered on the link between the cars for a few moments, clutching the safety handles, taking in the steady rumble of the train’s motion. This was not a very old system. It ran smooth. She was not much of a train nerd but the noise of its mechanical certainty focused her. The tunnel lights flashed by, a luminous beat, syncopated with the firefly blink of sparks from the third rail below.

There were eyes on her when she stepped into the preceding car. She must seem strange, standing between the cars, no coat for the wintry wind over her fine dress with its homemade vent, a diamond-studded bracelet and bargain-bin sneakers. She did not return any glances. She knew how to carry herself in a way that would repel them.

She thought of that towheaded German, who looked at her directly and then turned timid when she looked back. They would be missed at the reception, she supposed. Or at least the _Herr Doktor_ would.

Someone had big headphones turned up high. The buzz and squeal of electronic music escaped, keeping time for her while the train slowed, and halted, and opened its doors.

Another stop after this, and one more after that…

No. She couldn’t wait for the _one more_. If she did, she wouldn’t have the distance to lose him above ground. And her systems itched to run.

The doors closed. The train accelerated. Time ticked by in muffled techno.

The brakes came on. The energy thrown off by their friction seemed to coil in her chest. She palmed the baby knife in her left hand, lest it fall down her tights as she moved and become less accessible.

A pocket knife wasn’t her weapon of choice. She didn’t even know how to open it quickly. If she needed both hands to maneuver she would simply drop it. But somehow, it felt better to have it in her grasp.

Why? For the same reason she was running.

Because maybe it was futile. But meaning lived in gestures.

 

-

 

Yumi watched the staircases and the escalators as the train pulled into Charles Square. She would have to be nasty and vicious and even rude if anyone slowed her down. She shook out her ankles, one after the other, and poised herself by a pair of doors.

Before they were all the way open she launched.

Dashing up the wide stairs was faster, easier to dodge people. She flew through the station.

She could not know precisely from where or at what distance he trailed her. But he would have seen her take off. And he would be following.

For the gates she slowed, feeding her ticket through and abandoning it there to gain speed again. If she had to return to transit it would be in desperation to claim asylum and call for the authorities. But that would only complicate and prolong the inevitable.

Respected psychiatrist greeted by jetsetters in the VIP section versus universal interloper who did not legally exist. He had just enough cause to be nervous, but she knew how those games played out. Not much of a contest.

She had to make her own chances.

She made them with the gesture, the action of running. The acceptance that this was at once both self-betrayal and self-preservation. The promise to random Dot who did not know her but believed that she deserved to live.

Yumi kept the direction of the train in her mind, counting her twists and turns as she came up to the street, and pointed herself in that same direction under the streetlamps in the cold wet air. Her legs were stiff: she’d gotten a bit out of shape, staying in that house so long. She could barely take notice of it.

But as she kept running it grew worse, like an engine low on oil. Stiffer, dragging painfully, muscles unwilling and scarcely able to obey—and then the juggernaut shape of his scheming came into her perception.

The fencing. All that footwork. It wasn’t so he could see her fight. Maybe—well, maybe partly that.

It certainly wasn’t just to indulge her, although she did not doubt that he had taken genuine pleasure in it as she had.

It was to tire her.

Her muscles, though they remembered what to do in the salle, were out of practice. He might as well have put her in irons. She was running but she _could not run._

Perfume to track her. A duel to incapacitate her. Sex to ensnare her, probably. The good doctor anticipated that she might flee before she ever had and hamstrung her without her ever knowing.

She had nothing on him. Every last possibility was already under his control. It was all a test to him, all a game.

Fatigue forced her to a staggering mockery of a jog. The revelation threatened to stop her entirely. There was nothing she could do.

But Yumi would not take that for an answer. She was already here: she would not be stopped. Her teeth clenched hard and she pushed her angry tired body forward, and forward.

Through the wind, past the signs in the night over the sparsely populated sidewalks. Not knowing how far he was behind her and refusing to look. It didn’t matter. He was there. She would still run.

The cold was no help either. Her steps faltered. Tears from sheer agony of exhaustion clung at her lashes. She pushed. She called strength into herself from bass lines and third rails and broken swords and tiny knives and absent friends who would, if they could, scream at her to live. The groan of exertion that left her was more like a gritted scream of anger—

The streetlamp above her shorted, showering sparks.

Neon signs flickered.

Her power was here. Or someone’s.

The key was going to work. She was right.

_Run._

And yet she loved, she loved, she loved him. The moment she let herself forget or deny that, he would take it to turn against her.


	15. Victory

If he thought that she was heading for the police department, he would be wrong.

Yumi was operating on pure conjecture, based on what she had seen: the key favored height. If she meant to use it in a realm that was low-to-nil on any kind of magic, she had to get somewhere high up. And it had to be somewhere deserted, where no one would interfere.

The street she fought to run down bore the city’s own name. To the left would be the Baltimore Police Department. To the right, a complex of nightclubs. If she ended up tearing an ACL or something in her determination, either would suffice as asylum. Though neither would truly do anything to protect her.

It might have crossed his mind as a possibility, but by now he would understand that she had no intention of going to the police. He was following her out of curiosity, most likely. Or simply hunting.

She’d meant to outrun him and escape into her destination. In her current condition it was probably impossible to outpace his long Italian-shod strides—but she would continue to act as if she could.

It occurred to her to turn a corner appearing to run, then hide behind it and wait to attack him. But she had only one little weapon, probably not even good enough to incapacitate him; and she couldn’t surprise him that way either. He would smell her first.

There was nothing for it but to keep running. It hurt like fuckall; she would probably damage something. Profanities snapped behind her eyes at every step. But she could also be vicious to herself when the need arose. She forced herself to remember the terror she felt when he turned to look at her after she cut herself in the kitchen. She needed it now, she needed the fear to be ugly, the pants-pissing epinephrine flood that lets the wounded soldier fight unaware of her wounds, that makes the tired rabbit run faster than the fox.

Her red blood dripping on the onion. That was also true. _He used the onion without rinsing it I know he did I couldn’t think about it then but he did he did he did he ate me._

She was running too hard already to piss her pants.

There wasn’t actually much of a chance to lose him. Her path was too much of a straight line. Nothing mattered.

Except the gesture.

But she could make it out of here. She believed that. If she could just get to the top of this tower.

The Phoenix Shot Tower loomed up across the street. It wasn’t the tallest structure in town, but she thought it would suffice—

Fucking traffic light. Really?

At the top of her game she could have run into the street and leapt atop anything that came at her but—

Wait. No. She had done this kind of thing before. Someone’s power was here for her to use and she was no longer at the mercy of this world.

There was a signal. She reached out and told it to flip.

It took the drivers by surprise. Some of them ran the red light, seeing as they were not given time to slow down; some tried to obey. Tires screeched, bumpers bumped. Commotion ensued.

Yumi ran.

Or rather, she dragged herself at a decent speed across the street, into the Shot Tower park. She turned—looking only up at the traffic light—and tried making the signal go the other way again. But that attempt went awry and all the traffic lights at the intersection popped into darkness. _Oops._

Well, maybe a bit of chaos couldn’t hurt…

Cold grass crunched softly under her steps. Two cops meandered on the cobblestones in front of the tower, puffing on cigarettes. They looked up at the clamor of honking from the intersection.

“ _Now_ what the fuck?” one complained, and they threw their cigarettes down and headed toward it. Yumi hid behind a tree as they ambled by, considering that she looked ridiculous and was intent on trespassing.

So that had worked to her advantage after all. But she was still about to trap herself. _Fine. I’m going to be okay._

A sign with an emblem of crossed rifles marked the padlocked entrance. She would have been stuck without a crowbar, but now there was _something_ surrounding her, opening old channels for her. She flicked a thought at the padlock and tumblers fell into place. The deadbolt, too, moved when she told it to. She yanked the door open and went inside.

It was pitch dark, of course. But there was a booth next to the entrance where she found switches.

Problem was she was jamming everything she told to move, like lock tumblers, and the door pulled out, so there was no way to block it either. But there was stuff here, besides the manufacturing relics on display. She pulled the door shut again and pushed tables in front of it. That would buy a bit of time, or at least make for an alarm.

She looked up into the tower’s height. They’d built it to make lead shot. Bullets weren’t made that way any more but the architecture of the demand for death remained. A designated historical landmark, at one time the tallest structure in the violent young nation, until churches sprang up taller.

There was a flag on the top, she knew from pictures, that someone must have raised. So she would make it up there somehow. She shivered and started up the stairs, round and round… Her legs were furious. She dragged herself by the railing.

Clunking came from below—the tables in front of the door budging. It could be the cops. But probably not.

Inadvertently she froze when she heard the stack of tables tumble, expecting to hear him call her name.

Or hoping. But the tiger does not call to the unlucky fawn by name.

Silence told her just as plainly that it was not the police.

She did not look down. She looked up, judging how far she had left to go, and pulled herself onward and upward. Soon she clambered over the barrier that said _Employees Only_. In the brief pause she could hear the soft clanks of pursuit from the stairs far below.

Now there were ladders, in unknown states of disrepair. She held the little knife between her teeth and tried to rub more warmth into her fingers.

She clenched her jaw on the knife and climbed, angry at the reluctance of her muscles to move, every exhalation turning to a small sound of effort and rage. But she would not let him hear her shout.

She was high up enough to begin escaping the reach of the light. She probably shouldn’t be climbing too quickly, anyway. If she slipped she might not be able to catch herself…

More stairs. She fell forward on them, her body simply failing.

She crawled until she could stand again.

There was a rickety, disused room, where she kept her steps slow simply because it felt as though the floor might give way. Her eyes had adjusted just enough to find the other side. More locks to cheat open, and then a catwalk and ladders—and a trapdoor rusted shut.

She didn’t have the strength. _Open,_ she thought. _Open it open it open it—_

The groans of metal and creaks of wood echoed through the tower as he made his way up. If she was lucky a ladder or a floor would break under his weight. If she was lucky—except she didn’t want that to happen, any more than she wanted to throw him in front of a train.

She must not forget: she had eaten of him, too. If he had taken from her he had returned it in full measure and more, willing, adoring. What did that make her?

There were tears on her face. From emotion or from exertion—she could not be sure. Either. Both.

He gained on her. He was still able to move faster than her, and he never had to break into a run. His steps were even and terrifyingly light.

She felt like she would collapse into a kernel, a tiny overloaded stone of fear and love, and fall all the way down like the drops of lead shot. But she yanked at a trapdoor bolt, angry at her despair.

It moved.

She was still alive. She pulled the bolts open, creak by flaking creak, and then pushed. Metal whined. She climbed, snarling and shoving up against it.

Cold air howled.

The trapdoor was open and she dragged herself up, outside, grimacing as her shoulder went into a spasm. She slammed it shut again, for whatever good that would do. There were no bolts on this side.

And now?

Beyond the crenellated edge the city sparkled on the bay. The flag snapped over her head, the wind stinging her ears and fingertips. She thrust her hands under her arms and tried to listen for the watchers…

She realized, too late, that she should have been standing on the trapdoor, although perhaps her own weight would not even have been enough to hold it shut against the strength of someone who had to be well accustomed to moving bodies.

The trapdoor squealed open again and Yumi fumbled with her frozen fingers to open the little knife. Only a gesture.

Dr. Lecter climbed easily to the roof, more graceful than was fair by anyone’s count, though his breathing showed some labor and his hair was beginning to lose its styled place, his suit jacket unbuttoned.

She held the tiny blade out at him.

“The stoat is the same animal as the ermine,” he said, “prized for its winter coat of pure white with a black-tipped tail. Legend held that if pursued the little creature would turn to face its hunters, preferring to die in dignity rather than have its immaculate fur soiled.”

She took a chattering breath. “P-pretty sure the point of saving one’s skin is that it remains attached.”

“The legend is only a moralistic fantasy. In reality the stoat is an opportunistic hunter with sharp teeth of its own. Hard to catch, vicious when caught—far more trouble than it’s worth for dinner.”

Wind whistled in their ears. She tried to keep a fighting stance while her abused limbs demanded to curl in, desperate for warmth.

He removed his jacket and held it toward her at arm’s length.

She wanted to take it and fling it over the side. That would be ungrateful; being ungrateful was rude—at this juncture, perhaps a capital offense.

But was it a ploy? He knew that she was tired. If she took the jacket, would he spring while she was occupied putting it on?

No. That sort of tactic was beneath him when he already had too many advantages. This was genuine consideration.

Which she could not accept. She shook her head.

“Please, Yumi. You’ll be ill from exposure.”

“Kindness from you is more dangerous than the elements.”

“Don’t you prefer danger?” But, accepting her answer, he shrugged back into the jacket himself, and took a step forward.

Her heartbeat leapt higher, her systems still waiting for the signal to fight.

“It’s seen sometimes in veterans,” he mused. “In contrast to the avoidant behaviors of PTSD, there are those who become addicted to the so-called adrenaline rush. They cannot return to healthy lives or relationships; they crave the stimulation of danger, becoming reckless, self-destructive…”

“You know, I was expecting you to mock me, but I think getting diagnosed is worse.”

“Some pathologies are innate. It’s why you ran. It’s why you said what you did in the restaurant. The shelter is too quiet; you would much rather stand in the fury of the storm.”

“Let me guess—you admire me for it?”

“I’m fascinated. Like you are yourself.” That head tilt, avian curiosity, and strange tenderness in his voice. “Both fear and desire cause the pupils to dilate.”

“Well, and there’s what you love, the reflection of yourself in my wide-blown pupils. Not me.”

“That is part of it,” he admitted. “A kind mirror is a rare treasure. But you think yourself undeserving of anyone’s attachment, Yumi, and you’re mistaken.”

“ _I’m_ mistaken?” She squeezed her eyes shut and sighed. Her fingers around the knife were numb, along with most of her face. Real winner of a location for a lovers’ spat. “You—don’t even remotely know what you’re talking about. I amuse you, maybe—but your existence is so bleak and starved for company, so—devoid of anything approaching honest interaction that you don’t even bother to see a distinction!”

“And do you feel anything for me, or only the maenad ecstasy of your own nerves?”

He’d caught her. She had no riposte. Did she expect to win a debate about emotion against someone who manipulated it for fun and profit?

“Greed or loneliness or tedium—whatever drove us toward one another is less than what we find.” He took one more step closer. “It’s all right. Come down from here with me.”

“No.” She moved away again, at an angle across the roof, her balance pathetically wavering from cold and fatigue. A new muscle seemed to lock up in spasm every time she moved.

“I won’t harm you. I was annoyed, but you’re easy to forgive. We won’t even go home yet, if you like. There is a fine bistro where they pay attention to the cocktails…”

“Yes, it’s so tricky, isn’t it,” she hissed, and raised her shaky voice to be heard over the wind. “You won’t do anything I don’t want. But when you take me home, you will kiss me and unwind me, drown me in love and burn me in sensation, and then you’ll whisper death into my ear. Sooner or later. You’ll seduce me. You have to.”

“No. I will make a place for you.” He was all adoration and gravity.

“What _place_?”

“The place you long for. I’ll find a diplomat to bribe and get you papers, find you a room above a coffee shop in Berlin or Barcelona, full of light to read by, space for you to do as you will. I know you want to belong somewhere. The niche will be yours and I will come to you, when you please.”

“That’s a lie. You can’t do that. I’ll have three mojitos and tell everything to some bartender. You won’t risk your world for me.”

“I will. I already have. Stay with me, Yumi.”

So he knew what she was trying to do. How she meant to leave.

And he knew to offer her everything she scarcely understood that she wanted. The landscape of that future opened up before her. There would be Alpine chalets and Mediterranean twilights, wanderings through medieval streets and sweet blasphemy beneath cathedral icons, operas and flirtations and the terrible thrill that would come over her when they journeyed to somewhere isolated. They would dance through the world like light in brandy and in the intervals she would dabble in lit-crit journals and pine over philosophy-studded letters…

“It seems s-so perfect,” she stammered out, shivering hard. “How many pounds of flesh per annum?”

He blinked at her.

“I know what you do. I know enough to fear you and I love you for it. That’s all true. But I’m not going to live like that any more. It doesn’t matter whether or not I…partake. If I take beauty from the terror that other people die to feed, I’m already the same.”

“Sudden pangs of conscience?” he said, surprised, or pretending to be. “You were willing to kill. You don’t feel regret for it because you know you were following the path to yourself. Would you deny yourself now?”

She stared at him for a long moment. “What’s in the basement, Dr. Lecter?”

He didn’t look away. But he didn’t answer, either.

“You know you don’t have to shelter me. You recall what I walked in on when we met and it didn’t faze me too much. It didn’t even keep me out of your bed, did it? _So what the hell is in your basement that you don’t want me to see?_ ”

At that he looked a little bit pensive—no, it was sadness.

Yumi stepped toward him, cloaked in rage. “I have no idea what it is but I’ll tell you. It’s something else, something that’ll make me hate you. Enough to make me your enemy. And you know that and I can’t trust you.”

“No, you can’t. Not completely.” His gaze fell from her for an instant. His words were slow, heavy with the imminence of loss, but then he faced her evenly, knowing that to pull at her with any hangdog misery was far beneath the dignity of either of them. “But where you trust, I won’t betray.”

“Why didn’t you kill me?” she blurted.

“Why? At first, because you said ‘please’ when you had a gun pointed at me. Not many would bother.”

She stood dumbstruck. A fairy-tale monster, who spares your life if you’re polite enough.

“And then because you intrigued me. Then…because I came to enjoy your company.”

He moved closer to her again, tentatively.

She didn’t back away, though she couldn’t even try to hold the knife up now, relegated to hugging herself for heat.

“You’re too cold,” he said, only plain observation. “Come down with me. You are stifled in my home, caged; that is fair. Let me make a place for you.”

“A p-pedestal, you mean,” she retorted. “Funny thing about pedestals—if you move, you fall off.”

“Not a pedestal. A roost for you to alight on. Fly where you will. I’ll remain loyal to you.”

That sounded like an offer of an open relationship on her end. He could be comfortable in that, knowing perfectly well that no matter whom she might find to dally with in the dim glow of a Montmartre café, no one would compare to him. No one would see her like he did. And yet he was willing to cater to her silly insecurities, her possessive greed, to respect those flaws as part of her. Here, too, he would not betray: he would go to her. Only to her.

Shifting here and there, as one did for relationships, but neither asking the other to be anything else but what they were. An assassin and a murderer playing hide and seek through narrow Florentine alleys, for intrigue and sheer delight…

She shook her head, not in refusal so much as to get these visions out of it. This was all wrong. He was persuading her again. Tempting her.

But she was already tempted. He knew it. All his power was here.

 _What’s in the basement?_ What if that didn’t matter? What if she accepted the cost? What if this was the way things came, and this was who she loved, and this was where she could belong?

“Yumi, come with me.” He reached out for her. “Let me draw you a warm bath. Let yourself live as you wish.”

“As I wish…” She looked at his outstretched hand, steady even in the cold.

“I know you had to run, to bring yourself to this. I can only admire you for it.” He came one more step closer in blood-oath sincerity. “Give me your hand.”

Didn’t she want to…? So badly that she could feel the ache through all the cold and physical misery? Her arm was trying to reach out…

But something tugged at her mouth and turned into a sad bitter smile. “You win. You were always going to win.”

Dr. Lecter shifted, very slightly, as if suddenly uncertain of something.

Almost laughing, she looked up at him. “You get to see me betray myself. The sin I most despise. You win—but you were wrong about one thing.”

Slowly, he withdrew his hand, solemn and curious. “And what is that, Yumi?”

“You said there’s nothing to protect here. But there is.” She raised the knife again. “Me.”

Power flowed into her bone-chilled exhausted body, a connection online, freeing her to move, to stand tall. He stepped back in mild astonishment as the little knife in her hand glowed and grew, changing, until she held a rapier of white-gold dawn light.

She kept it pointed at his throat, but she didn’t feel triumphant, or joyful. Only real. Only a sense of her own will and all its conflicting directions.

“I was wrong, too,” she told him. “I was so afraid that if I fell in love with you I’d be stuck in this realm, unable to escape you. But there was never a question of me falling for you. After all, to become human I had to fall in love with death.”

“You and I were made for each other, in a way,” he replied—not a grasp at persuasion, but only another truth.

“In a way.” She moved back, away from him, unhindered. “But this just isn’t going to work out.”

“Why not?” He followed her, unwilling to let her widen the distance—keeping the point of her sword at his throat to remind her that doing him harm would hurt her. Close enough to very slightly, deliberately poke himself with the end of it, to feel that it had the substance of a real blade. It was persuasion now. “Everything you want is here.”

There was a sound in the clear cold sky, like thunder but not quite right, and static rose on their skin.

“I won’t take it,” said Yumi. “I am still more than what you know me to be. I will rise.”

But she couldn’t keep the hurt from her face, and she wasn’t one to try. It hurt to leave all this terrible beauty.

“Will you?” he said. “You won’t be able to let go.”

“You’re right. Whenever someone quips about that last taboo I’ll turn white and leave the room, and if I hear of churches falling I’ll shiver with delight to recall the texture of your name… But I will leave. Because I can.” A smile came to her face again. “I would wish you well, but—that would be wishing ill on too many others, I think. I wish you…I wish you a satisfying end.”

Dr. Lecter looked away smiling, as if bashful at a compliment, and turned his gaze back up to her, warmth and charm and true affection. There was no need to speak. _You do love me,_ that gaze said.

The huge sound came closer—distorted infrasound, thunder with a bass hum. Whatever power was here, it was fighting to get her out.

“How very strange,” he called over the din, “that when you are true to yourself you’re left with scars—but when you betray yourself, no mark at all.”

“That’s not strange, Dr. Lecter. That’s how it always goes.”

She could hear the watchers shouting. _Behind you. Behind you!_

Away from him.

She leapt backward, up into a crenel at the edge, now scarcely bound by gravity. He still pursued, rapt with curiosity.

Energy surged behind her, with warm air. The door was open. But she did not dare turn her back to him. To survive an encounter with a large predator, they say, look it in the eye as you move away. She still had the sword of light trained on him.

They both knew that if he made any move to physically subdue her, she would not hesitate in defending herself. If he wanted to hurt her badly enough, he could take the opportunity, just to force her into doing him harm. He was too proud to throw himself on a sword for that. But he let the point scratch him. She felt it somewhere deep and the cruelty sparked in his eyes.

He smiled up at her in his victory and recited something she could barely hear, much less understand. “ _Perché non sali il dilettoso monte ch’è principio e cagion di tutta gioia?_ ”

Yumi had no idea what the question was, but she had an answer. “I will not be yours.”

And she flung herself back, through the door between the realms.

She tumbled to the floor in the sorcerer’s tower. The door in the air closed with a resounding crack. Her skin burned from cold and every muscle screamed, and the shining sword was just a little knife.

“Am I…?” she croaked against the worn wooden floor that smelled of dried herbs and library dust. “I’m alive? I’m alive.”


	16. Epilogue: Strangely Slips the Drinker

Alive.

“Are you all right?” asked a very high, small voice.

Yumi groaned. “I will be sometime…”

“My fault,” said the sorcerer, low and curt. “The world to which I meant to send you has a powerful gatekeeper. I should have negotiated first. Instead, when you were refused entry, the guidance spell simply found another world…”

“…With a silver-tongued trickster,” Yumi finished. “I get it. Makes perfect sense. Look, I’m not even mad. Can I just have like, a hot springs retreat now? Holy shit, that is a big mouse.”

There was a three-foot-tall mouse in a pink dress standing over her, but with a readable expression, which now looked slightly miffed. Yumi belatedly realized that this was the source of the small high voice, so the mouse could speak, and had in fact spoken out of concern for her well-being.

“That mouse is the queen of her world, and the most powerful wielder of light magic to live in some time,” the sorcerer informed her. “The lack of magic in that other world had you trapped there. I asked her here to help you.”

“Oh. That’s…um. Sorry.” Yumi strained to sit up, into a slightly more dignified position. Everything still hurt and she was shivering. But the mouse queen also wore a crown. “Thank you, your majesty.”

With a gesture the sorcerer made a blanket float out of somewhere to land on her shoulders.

“You’re welcome,” the mouse queen said, primly, but not inclined toward ill will.

Yumi felt wretched, dirty, compromised and sin-stained and torn, sore and sick and exhausted and fed up to fucking here with civility. But alive.

“Thanks,” she said again, to the mouse queen and the sorcerer, who both meant well. Strange to remember that people could mean well without any twists.

The sorcerer only nodded faintly. The mouse queen smiled. A walking broomstick with arms brought a tea set, the contents of which were spiked with some restorative potion. The mouse queen and Yumi shared it there on the floor.

When she could stand again the mouse queen showed her to another room (which, she suspected, might not always be there), pleasantly dim like a fading dusk sky, the walls and ceiling shimmering with a shifting star mural. More walking broomsticks marched out around her, carrying wooden buckets, from which they had just finished filling a steaming scented bath. And there she was left to her own devices.

Yumi took an enormous breath, rib-straining deep. She was safe. Although when she undressed to bathe she found that the gold feather cuff was still there on her wrist, and it would not come off.

 

-

 

“I can’t do anything about that,” the sorcerer replied later when she asked if he could take it off. “It’s your magic keeping it there.”

“But I don’t want it.”

As soon as she said that, Yumi knew it for a lie.

Truth and a lie. True enough to say, and false because, well, there the thing was.

The weight of possession.

“It will come off when you don’t want it,” said the sorcerer, scribbling in a grimoire.

 _Well shit,_ Yumi thought. The cuff glittered at her.

“Magic makes it seem more tangled,” he went on, still not looking up. “But you’re not the only one to love unwisely.”

He raised his left arm so that the sleeve of his blue robe fell back, and there was a shimmer—he relaxed a glamour to reveal some kind of twisting dark tattoo around his sinewy forearm. A black dragon, breathing malevolent green fire, and no ordinary tattoo. It moved, serpentine, the fire flaring up the back of his hand.

Everyone was full of stories.

 

-

 

Yumi slept for most of another day. She had the ripped sullied clothes she’d arrived in burned. Which didn’t mean much when the bracelet remained. On purpose she kept the sneakers, and the knife.

Broomsticks conjured her relics of the civilian fashion to which she’d grown accustomed in another universe—a ribbed tank top and cargo pants, a cropped canvas jacket and a floppy newsboy cap. She wrapped a dark green kerchief around the glittering cuff. Spells of concealment did not come easily to her.

“My error nearly burned out that poor key,” said the sorcerer. “I can’t send you on your way just yet.”

“I understand,” Yumi replied, much recovered. “I don’t mind, actually. Downtime sounds great. But how far can you send me?”

“Hrrrm…” He pulled a thick book from the air, a grimoire or a star atlas. “Rest, or training? You could use both. And what about a new sword?”

“Actually, at the moment, I’d just like to step out and get a drink, if that’s an option.”

The sorcerer did not demure about rolling his beady eyes. “You revolutionaries are never apprentice material. There’s a train that comes when it’s wanted.”

“Huh? There’s a train?”

“Yes, it stops right outside and it will take you to a town. Go on.” He waved her away. The old sorcerer was a well-meaning man but not terribly patient.

 

-

 

The train was elaborately beautiful and absolutely empty, devoid of conductor or driver or other passengers, which was a bit unsettling. But she got on and sat patiently. It took her to an idyllic town, painted dreamy red in the sunset.

Yumi wandered in circles outward from the station, passing by plenty of sweet-looking cafés with stained glass on the doors, until she found the seedy part. Every town had one, even a place like this.

The loudest dive was called The Victoria. She pushed open the door, breathed in the blaring whatever-music on cheap speakers, and sat at the bar. Suspicious glances followed her.

“Who’s this fucking fox-eyed cunt?” the bartender sneered in her general direction.

Yumi leaned an elbow on the bar and gave him a cheerful smile. “How about you give her a fucking whiskey before she takes it herself and breaks the bottle on your inbred donkey face.”

The other patrons turned.

Three drunk men lay on the floor, one whining and holding his groin, before the dose of turpentine-nasty booze was set before her. She shook out her bloody-knuckled hand and upended the glass.

 

-

 

Although the idea of other universes offered a myriad of, to say the least, intriguing possibilities—and it was frustrating that, outside of a semi-automatic handgun bearing the insignia of a manufacturer which to the best of his research did not exist on this Earth, he had no proof with which to write the relevant theoretical authorities—the fact was that she had left him, and Lecter abandoned the thought of her.

She had asked whether he would feel it if she hurt him. He kept his word and felt it for five minutes and twelve seconds, until he exited the shot tower.

But the space where she had moved was empty and still smelled of her—the passenger seat, the kitchen, the bed. Fear, sex, the unnameable scent of the _other_ thing that was part of her. Something between myrrh and ozone and putrefaction. Poison.

It was poison, the likes of which he had no idea how to handle, and he never would have eaten her. But how could he tell her so, when she recognized in herself how she loved that terror? In every respect he gave her exactly what she wanted.

The intensity of emotion she brought left behind an eddying void that subtly haunted his memories, so that when he sat to his drawing he found himself copying Lefebvre’s _Verité_ with her face, or shading the shape of her shoulders into a lamenting Magdalene. Finally he gave in and drew her deliberately as _Lady with an Ermine_ , but the decorum of the composition did not capture her, and he tossed it in the fire. He depicted her instead as a fine-boned fey Dionysus, posed like the Caravaggio but with lips parted and eyes full of wild come-hither avarice like a Waterhouse nymph, and the hilt of a smallsword gleaming just behind the bounty of fruits.

This he also threw in the fire, but with more satisfaction.

Alana Bloom asked what had happened to her. He told her the truth: Yumi had successfully escaped, and it was safe to assume they would see no more of her. “And you’re sure she wasn’t just there to make copies of your keys and plunder your decor?” Alana fussed.

“I suppose it should make me more cautious,” he conceded. “With that story, I’d only be investigated for insurance fraud. I will change the locks.”

He had canceled an appointment with his psychiatrist without giving any reason. Perhaps it was the sort of thing one should bring up in a therapy session, since he realized suddenly how willing he had been to disrupt things for her—if she’d stayed he would have found a way to end the amorphous entanglement with Dr. du Maurier.

 

-

 

“I met someone who presented to me the possibility of romantic attachment,” Lecter confessed. “But she disagreed. She came to the conclusion that we were incompatible and ended the relationship.”

Dr. du Maurier’s blond waves shifted slightly as she took this in. “Who initiated it?”

“She did.”

It was dangerous territory. But then, most things between them were.

“Did she lead you to believe that she wanted a long-term relationship?” Dr. du Maurier asked.

He looked away. “We weren’t thinking in long terms. Until I began to.”

“And then she refused.”

“Yes.”

“You’ve had casual dalliances before. How was this different for you?”

“I thought we had some values in common,” he said. “I felt…a deeper sense of companionship from her.”

“But she rejected your companionship. How does that make you feel?”

The question fell like a blunt guillotine. Dr. du Maurier was taking the opportunity to be cruel.

He smiled faintly. “Regretful. I must have come on too strongly somehow.”

“That is an illusion of control,” she said with more finesse. “Only the speculation that if you acted differently, she would not have left. But other people will make their own choices, Hannibal. You have to accept the limitations of your influence over them.”

A daring remark.

The unasked question still hung in the air. _How much did she see?_

It would never be asked. Dr. du Maurier steered the conversation toward vague concepts of love and trust that had nothing to do with them.

Now and then, Yumi still wandered about the halls of his mind, rooting through poetry or cosmology, dragging her greedy fingertips on the balustrades, so he had to fix her a place—he set her on a mezzanine as the Winged Victory of Samothrace, the figure completed to show her face wide open in wonder as her hand reached out with the laurel crown. For she might rise, but as she knew, the victory was his.

 

-

 

Seasons passed. On an evening of fluctuating humidity a harpsichord string snapped. Sulking at it, he had a liberal pour of brandy, which happened to be the same one he’d shared with her.

He went to the desk and took out pen and ink and fine stationery.

When he had finished the rambling letter and signed it _Yours, in better fates than wisdom— Hannibal Lecter,_ he waited for the ink to dry, folded it in an envelope which he addressed to _La Chercheuse d’Étoiles_ and bit his tongue to seal, then watched the paper glow and curl in the hearth.

Three days later the head of the Behavioral Analysis Unit of the FBI came to his office.

 

-

 

The key regained its power. Negotiations went through. Seasons passed in another world, another city.

The skyline twinkled through the hazy distance, structures bruised and rebuilding, scratching at the dusk with a hundred blinking cranes. Yumi stared at the future and mourned the could-have-been. The betrayal of desire.

The present intruded, her phone interrupting the music to plink at her with persistent text messages.

 

>Hey come out to bayonet the hot bartender is here

>Hey  
>Hello

>Are you on the floor listening to lana del rey again

No.

>What are you doing

I’m on the roof.

>Are you listening to lana del rey

Maybe.

>You get down here right now I’m ordering you a drink and you better not leave me to drink it myself

Don’t you want to motorboat that bartender yourself?

>NOT THE POINT  
>Don’t make me come up there I will throw your SHIELD issue StarkPhone into a single-family brownstone’s kiddy pool  
>Why can’t I ever have friends who are getting over normal dudes  
>No my friends get emo at thunderstorms or puke when they smell a BBQ  
>BURGERS! HOW CAN YOU LET A MAN RUIN BURGERS FOR YOU!!?!?!?  
>I’m sorry that was super mean come to the bar I love you.

That was mean but I’m laughing.  
Get me a whiskey drink, bartender’s choice.

>It’s already in the shaker. You’re missing this dude’s forearm action

I love you too.

 

She took out her earbuds and sighed in the heavy air, the last stand of Brooklyn summer. It was unrelenting and humid and just plain gross, but she loved this weather, how the day blazed so hot it burned the blue-white sky brown at the edges, how the city held onto that heat in the short nights to make laughter louder and cocktails more satisfying.

There was so much here. Now.

Yumi put the phone in her pocket and went downstairs, stopping in their narrow book-crammed apartment to chug water and wipe off some sweat and apply deodorant, and retied the kerchief around her wrist as she headed to the bar.

 

-

 

In a dark castle, the raven alighted on the witch’s shoulder, an envelope in its beak.

“And what have we here, pet?” The envelope dropped into her waiting hand. It smelled of hot metal and smoke. “A letter? But not for me. Am I to play messenger?”

The raven cocked its head, the white paper and black script reflected in its shiny eye, and made a short curious caw.

“Those poor far-flung worlds that forgot all their magic—they have nothing left to work with but blood and fire. To think a little letter made it all this way under such primitive conditions. It’s impressive, really!” The witch laughed softly. “But not enough. It still needs more magic to help it along, doesn’t it, and so it falls into my hand.”

The raven cawed again.

“Such a funny thing, a letter. There it is, a heart poured out in writing, crystallized—and yet the heart can change before the writing ever reaches its destination.” She looked to the raven with a smirk. “Shall we deliver it anyway?”

 

-

 

 _…lovers, are you still the same? When you lift yourselves_  
_each to the other’s lips—drink unto drink:_  
_O how strangely the drinker slips from the sacrament._

\- Rilke

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For such ridiculous conceits, my writing process is terribly slow and deliberate. This was written mostly between seasons one and two, and finished in the hiatus before season three, then sat for a while before I accomplished the final continuity edits. So any similarities with content in the show after Season 1 (and the Season 2 trailer) is super damn coincidental. Particularly some of the dialogue in _Antipasto_.
> 
> This work is actually the third installment in what can only be termed the Starseeker series. The first, which takes place in the world of the best anime (fight me), _Revolutionary Girl Utena_ , was written twelve years ago during Full Weeaboo Phase and still resides on fanfiction.net, and I can’t bring myself to post it here without an overhaul. The second is a yet-unfinished epic for _Final Fantasy VII_ , eventually to merge with _Kingdom Hearts_ into a multiverse-within-multiverse…and I don’t post WiPs. This is only up here because it is finished and I had fun writing it.
> 
> Here at the end, the traveler goes on traveling, and without naming any exact names, yes, that’s _Kingdom Hearts_ and then the MCU.  
>  …Yen Sid and Maleficent is probably the rarest pair I ship.
> 
>  
> 
> Acknowledgements:
> 
> A cornucopia of thanks and fancy drinks to [echoindarkness](http://archiveofourown.org/users/echoindarkness/profile/), stalwart companion and beta, ever ready to respond to my dumbest texts with [that intervention gif](http://ak-hdl.buzzfed.com/static/2014-03/enhanced/webdr06/29/20/anigif_enhanced-6154-1396139263-6.gif).  
> A German-Sunday-noise-ordinance-violating shout out to [demoisellelouche](http://demoisellelouche.tumblr.com/), comrade in Villain Problems.  
> Love and fistbumps for all the encouragement from [matterforms](http://matterforms.tumblr.com/), [nimblermortal](http://archiveofourown.org/users/nimblermortal/profile/), and [teaberryblue](http://archiveofourown.org/users/teaberryblue/profile/). And [pts](http://archiveofourown.org/users/pts/profile), who has long insisted that “Mary Sue” is _not_ a fair abbreviation for “universe-hopping heroine of a panfandom cosmological myth-arc, who happens to possess inexplicable levels of game” and that I should post my fic.  
>  A doff of the hat to skipthedemon, a friend of friends, who tackled [this post](http://septimalshenanigans.tumblr.com/post/112853252401/skipthedemon-darkersolstice-nimblermortal) and provided the [title](http://septimalshenanigans.tumblr.com/post/83291421158/nimblermortal-septimalshenanigans).


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